Male Women's Track Champion Says Female Competitors Actually Have Advantage
The male track athlete who won an NCAA women’s national championship denies having an unfair advantage over female runners.
“If anything, me competing against cisgender females is a disadvantage because my body is going through so many medical implications like it’s going through biochemistry changes,” Franklin Pierce University runner CeCe Telfer told ESPN’s “Outside The Lines” in a feature that aired Thursday.
“If anything, me competing against cisgender females is a disadvantage..”@FPUathletics track star CeCe Telfer talks about the physical challenges she faces while competing as a transgender woman. pic.twitter.com/9VhlOVA70V
— Outside The Lines (@OTLonESPN) June 13, 2019
“So being on hormone replacement therapy, your muscle depletion, your muscle is deteriorating, you lose a lot of strength because testosterone is where you get your strength and agility and all that athletic stuff, so I have to work twice as hard to keep that strength. And if I slack a day that’s like three days set behind,” Telfer added.
Telfer, a biological male who identifies as a transgender woman, won the NCAA DII women’s 400-meter hurdles championship last month, besting the second place finisher by more than a second.
2016: Craig Telfer is ranked 200th
2017: Craig Telfer is ranked 390th
2018: Craig Telfer ‘transitions to female’
2019: CeCe Telfer is national championhttps://t.co/KHXaIjhYvo pic.twitter.com/Uoy72PCqkR— Adam Ford (@Adam4d) May 31, 2019
NCAA policy says male athletes who identify as transgender can compete on women’s teams after suppressing their testosterone levels for a full calendar year.
Telfer previously ran a variety of events for Franklin Pierce’s men’s team, going by the first name Craig, according to school records.
Telfer competed on Franklin Pierce’s men’s team as recently as January 2018, according to published meet results from the Middlebury Winter Classic in Vermont.
By then, Telfer started using the name CeCe, while still competing on the men’s team.
Male athletes who compete in female athletics as a transgender woman has risen in public debate partly from transgender women dominating their female competitors.
Last month, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed the Equality Act, which would require schools to include male athletes who identify as transgender women to participate on female sports teams.
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