Olympic and NCAA champions demand action to protect women’s swimming, says NCAA’s response is not good enough

A group of University of Arizona swimmers wrote a letter to the NCAA expressing deep concerns about the state of women’s swimming following Lia Thomas’s win at this year’s championship.

"Since the adoption of Title nine, young mothers like myself…and most of the women from the University of Arizona on our list have small children, for the first time ever we feel like our daughters may not have the same opportunities for success that we did," former NCAA champion Marshi Smith told Fox News. "It's something that has motivated us to speak out publicly."

In their letter the group of almost 40 retired swimmers which includes Olympians, a head coach and USA Swimming national team director, and many NCAA champions, raised a number of concerns regarding the fairness of allowing trans-athletes to compete alongside women and offered solutions to secure the integrity of women’s sports.

"It’s hard to express the anguish the women’s swim community has experienced this past week watching the 2022 NCAA Swim & Dive Championships," the letter reads. 

University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas accepts the winning trophy for the 500 Freestyle finals as second place finisher Emma Weyant and third place finisher Erica Sullivan watch during the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships on March 17th, 2022 at the McAuley Aquatic Center in Atlanta Georgia.  (Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

UPenn swimmer Lia Thomas won the 500-meters freestyle competition in March, becoming the first transgender NCAA champion in Division I. Following Thomas’s win, Smith said she and other former Arizona swimmers decided to come together and speak out because "individually we felt like we didn't have a voice. We weren't being asked our