‘We Are Being Hounded’: Trans Runner Decries World Athletics Stand to Protect Women’s Sports

A transgender runner banned from the Paris Olympics is blasting the World Athletic Council for their “unfair” decision to protect women’s sports by banning trans athletes.

Halba Diouf. 21, is a man. However, Diouf identifies as a woman and underwent transition treatments beginning in adulthood. His native France decided to recognize him as a woman in 2021.

Diouf became outraged after hearing that he could not represent France in the 200-meter race in the 2024 Paris Olympics as a woman due to the World Athletics Council’s recent decision to ban protect fairness in women’s sports by banning men.

“I cannot understand this decision as transgender women have always been allowed to compete if their testosterone levels were below a certain threshold,” Diouf told Reuters. “The only safeguard transgender women have is their right to live as they wish, and we are being refused that, we are being hounded. … I feel marginalized because they are excluding me from competitions.”

As Fox News reports, “…previous rules and regulations that said trans women and athletes with differences in sex development (DSD) could run in events between 400 meters and the mile if their levels of natural plasma testosterone is below five nanomoles per liter. And 100-meter and 200-meter sprinters were clear to race.”

Diouf’s puzzlement over the change of rules can be best understood by looking at the case of Lia Thomas, the notorious record-breaking trans swimmer from the University of Pennsylvania. Lia Thomas was an exceedingly mediocre swimmer when competing in the men’s division who suddenly became the greatest swimmer in the history of the women’s NCAA division despite taking testosterone therapy.

How?

As sports scientist Ross Tucker explains, Thomas’ meteoric rise from mediocre men’s division swimmer to GOAT women’s division swimmer -despite the fact that Thomas took hormone therapy – basically proves that men do indeed have an inherent athletic advantage over women.

So, in other words, the rules for Diouf and other men like him changed because Lia Thomas proved that testosterone therapy/blockers are a wholly inadequate way of limiting the inherent athletic advantages in size, musculature, bone structure, and heart and lung capacity, that a man has over a woman.