The International Cycling Union (UCI) will ban female transgender athletes from participating in cycling events. The ruling states that participants who started their transition after puberty will be prohibited from taking part in future competitions. According to UCI, the measurement was taken to prevent the influence that sex change treatments have on people’s sports performances and to provide equal opportunities.
“This organization aims to ensure equal opportunities for all participants in these competitions, adopting this prohibition as a precautionary measure. From now on, female transgender athletes who have transitioned after (male) puberty will be prohibited from participating in women’s events on the UCI International Calendar — in all categories — in the various disciplines.”
The regulation came into effect on July 17, 2023 and transgender females will not be able to join competitions unless their gender transition was started before puberty. This decision came after the UCI required transgender women to keep their testosterone levels to 2.5 nanomoles per liter or less for 24 months if they wanted to compete. About this banning American rider Austin Killips, who is the first openly transgender woman to win an ICU competition (The Tour of the Gila), stated:
“It’s certainly concerning that the nature of the discourse, the amount of energy that has gone into building this narrative would lead you to believe that there’s this massive number of trans athletes participating in sports and winning all the time, when the reality is that we’re statistically underrepresented. By the number, some of us do well, a lot of us do just fine, are just normal competitors.”
