Boston Marathon and Nike Controversies

 

I was once asked if I would coach a transgender athlete and my answer was “yes.” That question was followed by—Do I think transgenders that were born males should be allowed to compete against women?

Before I answer this question, I think it’s best to hear from some of the experts—biological women—and how they have been treated in the name of diversity and inclusion. 

The Boston Marathon

There is no doubt that the Boston Marathon is one of the meccas in the sporting world. My love for the Boston Marathon started back in my college years as I studied the history of the event. The event is one of the oldest running events in the world. It’s been a race that has been impacted by war, social change and most recently a pandemic.  

In 2018, the marathon confirmed that transgender runners could compete under the gender they identified as without being on hormones and this year the Boston Athletic Association has created a separate division for those runners that identify as “non-binary.” However, a transgender runner who identifies as a woman can still compete in the women’s division.

Marathon world record-holder Paula Radcliffe was totally against this and in 2018 she tweeted, “The serious significance here is worse because Boston is notoriously difficult to qualify for. Opening women’s QT’s up to any male who ‘self-identifies’ as female is unfair because the end result will be that female BQT’s are made harder due to the added numbers achieving them.”

Radcliffe’s argument is that the women qualifying wouldn’t have been able to make the cutoff time as their gender at birth, making the women’s field even more competitive. She continued to write, “They can identify however they want to. Just not in a sporting competition where they can deprive a woman of a qualifying place. This is because qualifying times for women are slower than for men since biological men are capable of running faster than biological women.”

In September, the B.A.A. announced that, for the second year in a row, there will be no time cutoff for qualification in 2023; all registrants with a qualifying time during the qualification window were accepted.

In 2022, for the first time since 2013, there was no cutoff, due to an increased field size and a pandemic-related scarcity of qualifying races. 2021, by contrast, saw the biggest cutoff in race history–registrants had to be at least seven minutes and 47 seconds faster than their age-group qualifying time to gain admittance to the race, and almost 10,000 runners were denied entry as a result.

Registrations were down another 14 per cent this year (representing about 4,000 runners) after a 7% drop in 2022.  The race’s 37-year sponsor, John Hancock, announced recently that its sponsorship would end with the 2023 event.

It’s not fair to say that this is a result of runners boycotting the races because of the rule changes for transgender and non-binary runners. Runner’s World noted a big drop in all road races across North America.  However, the biggest drops were in races with similar rules implemented by the B.A.A.

Nike

Athletic apparel giant Nike recently hired transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in marketing campaigns to promote the company's female clothing. This led Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies to call for customers to stop buying Nike's products. Davies, who won silver in the 1980 Moscow Olympics, said Nike's decision represented a "step" back after some sports organizations created protected categories for biological women in competitions.

Nike has been under scrutiny in the past for their financial treatment of women because only 1% of the USA sponsorship dollar goes to females in sport.

Nike once sponsored Allyson Felix, one of the world's most incredible track athletes.  Allyson also had dreams of having a family and when she became pregnant, Nike reduced her sponsorship by 70%.

Recently Kara Goucher revealed for the first time in her book that Nike Oregon Project coach Alberto Salazar sexually assaulted her twice while giving her massages, as well as sexually harassed her while traveling on airplanes to competition. And when Goucher became pregnant, Nike stated they would cut her pay 25% if she didn’t stay with her race schedule.

Nike has since been criticized for being more concerned with inclusion versus treating women involved in sport equally. Especially when Dylan Mulvaney tweeted, “Happy March Madness!! Just found out this had to do with sports and not just saying it’s a crazy month.”

Nike was bombarded with negative social media (especially from female athletes) and Nike vowed to remove any comments that were not "in the spirit of a diverse and inclusive community."

My Thoughts

First of all, these are privately run operations and it’s up to them if they want to establish such rules and marketing campaigns. It doesn’t mean that you are forced to support either of the establishments and I will no longer support either. 

This doesn’t mean that I’m going to throw away all my Nike apparel. I have far too much to throw away and I’m not going to spend a fortune buying new clothes.  However, I will not buy any new Nike products until Nike treats biological women with the same “diversity and Inclusion.” 

As for the Boston Marathon—I totally agree with Ms. Radcliffe.

Biological males who identify as women should not be included in the women’s field (especially with no hormone treatment as Boston states). It’s proven that men are bigger, stronger, and faster.  It’s the primary reason that men’s and women’s sports are separated.  In track and field, there are male and female divisions for a reason.  Biology is real and it’s evident in the results.

Isn't ironic that Diana Kipyokei -- the 2021 Boston Marathon winner -- has been banned six years and had her title taken away because of a positive drug test for steroid use that gave her an unfair advantage?

The Boston Marathon determines qualifying times not only by gender, but by age. Science has ways of determining someone’s physical age in comparison to their chronological age. Studies show that age-specific testosterone levels in men have been in a slow and consistent decline for several decades. Researchers call the changes “alarming.”  Is it alarming enough to allow a 35-year-old male with the testosterone levels of a 50-year-old to be allowed to use the qualifying standard of a 50-year-old male? 

In 2022, the Boston Marathon formed a team of 8 women to represent the original eight finishers from the first official women’s field in 1972. They also created a finishers jacket to commentate the occasion.

While I didn’t run in 2022, I purchased a jacket to honor all the women that I have been blessed to coach during my 33 years as a high school and private coach. On Monday, April 17^th, I will wear that jacket inside out not in protest, but to honor those women that feel they are being turned against. 

***I work on a school campus and I will not do this on campus. The school is not a place for something that is deemed “political.”