Re: 'The assault on women's rights in sports today' [Maynard letter, Village News, 6/08/23]

Maynard’s reportage may be improving. His latest fantasy actually includes two verifiable statements (a first, I believe): to wit, Lia Thomas, who had transitioned from male to female, won the 2022 women’s 500 freestyle race. The expected winner, Emma Weyant, took second place.

But the real news is in what Maynard didn’t say. Thomas’s time was 4:33:24, Weyant’s time was 4:34:99. So Thomas won by a margin of 1.75 seconds. Hardly a smashing victory. Now let’s look at what it would take to start breaking records. In the women’s 500 freestyle, Katie Ledecky set the record in 2017, with a time of 4:24:06: a difference of 9-10 seconds! And just to put a wrap on this, Thomas also entered the 2022 200 and 100, finishing fifth and eighth, respectively.

Now then, about the purported “horde” of male-to-female transsexuals swamping women’s sports. Statistics are hard to come by, as this is a relatively new area of politicization. According to the UCLA Williams Institute of Law: “Approximately 1.6 million people ages 13 and older—0.6% of the population—identify as transgender in the United States” (6/10/2022). However, of that 0.6%, many are older than 17 and not all are male-to-female transsexuals. And finally, of those that are male-to-female transsexual's, only a fraction would be college sports candidates. In short, it takes more than 0.2 or 0.3% to constitute a horde. And sports organizations are experienced in dealing with “enhanced” performance of all kinds. Let’s let them do their jobs.

John H. Terrell