Three biological males — one of them Canadian — dominated a women’s cycle championship in Redmond, WA over the weekend, taking home the gold, silver and bronze medals. Fans were up in arms that the podium was full of hulking men after the elite women's Madison championship in the Marymore Grand Prix at the city’s Jerry Baker Memorial Velodrome. Cyclists competed in two-person teams. Each one had a biological male, despite being a women’s race. Canadian Jordan Lothrop, who in 2023 ranked all the way down the list at number 22 in the men’s cycling league in Victoria, BC, won the top spot when racing against biological females. Jenna Lingwood, a biological man who competed against men until 2017 when he began identifying as a women, came second. He is 43 years old and a member of the women's cyclocross squad Team S&M in Oregon. Eva Lin, formerly Henry Lin, placed third. He competed on the San Jose State University's men's cycling team until he switched to the women’s team in 2022. . According to venue rules, “bullying or derogatory comments especially related to race, creed, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, physical or mental disability” will not be tolerated, per the Daily Mail. While the sport’s governing body Union Cycliste Internationale in 2023 barred trans athletes who have went through male puberty, USA Cycling in January circumvented those rules with a new rule of their own: as long as biological males who identify as female undergo “elite athlete fairness evaluations” conducted by independent panels of medical professionals, they can compete in top competitions against women. To meet these standards, their testosterone, the male hormone naturally produced by men, must be artificially lowered through drugs to reach less than 2.5 nanomoles per liter for at least 24 months.For lower-level competitions, transgender cyclists simply have to full out a “self-identity verification request,” which is then reviewed by USA Cycling.
