By Andrea Widburg
On January 8, a so-called ‘transgender woman’ swimmer calling himself Lia Thomas (real name: Will Thomas), after sweeping NCAA races in December, lost to a woman who claims to be a man but still swam as a woman. I wrote then that Thomas’s race looked like a set-up intended to prove that, just because men claim to be women, that doesn’t mean they have a competitive advantage. Now, one of the real women who swam at that meet has come forward alleging that the fake man and fake woman did indeed collude before the race.
You can read my January 9 post here. The short quick version is that, after Thomas swept his races in December, coming in so far ahead of the actual women that they weren’t even swimming the same race, he suffered a bizarre reversal in January. At that race, he lost to a woman named Iszac Henig, who claims she’s actually a man, although she hasn’t yet started testosterone. Notably, even her best times were far slower than some of the world’s best real woman swimmers.
I said that the whole thing reminded me of 2020 when New Zealand sent a man named Gavin Hubbard to the Olympics to compete in weightlifting as a woman named Laurel Hubbard. People were outraged because of his lifelong testosterone advantage. However, once at the Olympics, Hubbard failed completely. My theory then was that he intentionally threw the competition to advance the false narrative that men who pretend to be women are exactly like women when it comes to physical competition.
So, when I saw the results of Henig’s and Thomas’s races, I wrote this:
But just as with Hubbard, I’m troubled by the numbers. It’s hard to do one-on-one analyses because they’ve been swimming all sorts of different races, but I compared whatever information I had available when it came to Thomas’s top times to the overall Division I top NCAA times, as well as comparing them to his and Henig’s times yesterday. What emerges is that Henig is a decent swimmer for a woman, although by no means NCAA champion material, and that Thomas experienced a sudden collapse.
[snip]
Weird, right? I’m not accusing Thomas of throwing the races. I’m just pointing out how useful it is that Thomas, just like Hubbard, suddenly flamed out when the debate about men competing against women reached a fever pitch.
On Wednesday, a (real) woman on the Penn women’s swim team anonymously had an interview on Outkick (anonymous because of the real threat from activists and the general campus climate), and explicitly accused Thomas and Henig of cooking up the plan to advance their agenda:
“Looking at [Lia’s] time, I don’t think she was trying,” the Penn swimmer alleges. “I know they’re friends and I know they were talking before the meet. I think she let her win to prove the point that, ‘Oh see, a female-to-male beat me.’”
When pressed on if she flat-out thought it was collusion, the Penn swimmer seemed convinced.
“I do. I can’t say for sure, but I wouldn’t be shocked if I found out that was 100% true,” Thomas’ teammate said.
[snip]
“I was on deck and said to a friend, ‘[Thomas is] literally not trying.’ You could just tell,” OutKick’s source said. “It was blatantly obvious. I was watching the 200 free and [Thomas] was literally keeping pace with the other girls.
“[Thomas] was No. 1 in the country at one point. These are definitely talented swimmers, but they’re not the caliber of being at the top in the country or anything like that.”
The anonymous woman’s allegations aren’t proof, of course, but her statement about the conversation between Thomas and Henig, as well as her observations about Thomas not trying, are consistent with my theories. Hubbard and Thomas are activists who are willing to throw a race, not for money, but to advance their sexual-political agenda.
To his credit, even Bruce Jenner (aka Caitlyn Jenner) agrees that biological men shouldn’t be competing against women, and he’s been speaking out loudly against the NCAA’s stupid “split the baby” plan to have specific sports within the NCAA make their own rules:
We’re being conned from ig to zack. Men and women are not interchangeable and now there’s reason to believe that male athletes who compete in women’s sports may be running cons to force a fake narrative.
The reality is that men have more physical strength than women. Sure, there are weak men and strong women but, when you’re talking about true athletic competitions, men beat women, even men who have gelded themselves physically or chemically. And if you believe anything else, email me, because I’ve got a lovely bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.