This past Tuesday, World Aquatics, the world governing body for swimming, announced that they would be incorporating an “open category” for worldwide swimming competitions to ensure that biological men would not be competing in women’s swimming competitions.
During an address at the World Aquatics’ General Congress, the organization’s president Husain Al-Musallam confirmed the new “open category” however, has not yet announced a timeline as to when the category would be active.
“It was very important that we protected fair competition for our female athletes,” Al-Musallam shared in an announcement, “But you have heard me say many times there should be no discrimination. Nobody should be excluded from our competitions.”
In 2022, World Aquatics announced a ban on transgender athletes from participating in events such as the Olympics and various world championships, shortly after biological male athlete, Lia Thomas, took first place in the women’s 500-yard freestyle at the NCAA Swimming Championship.
Just three months after Thomas took first, World Aquatics, (known as FINA at the time) made the announcement to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports. This new decision has been praised for not only protecting women’s sports but also for giving trans-identifying athletes their own category as opposed to allowing them to unfairly compete against women.
Shortly after the announcement, Thomas began trending on X (formerly Twitter), as many praised the announcement as an important step forward in the protection of women’s sports.
“Men banned from women’s swimming. Good.” tweeted Laurence Fox.
Others took to the platform to praise Riley Gaines, the swimmer who tied with Thomas back in 2022 for helping bring attention to this issue within women’s swimming.
“Kudos to Riley Gaines whose courage helped make this happen!” Dinesh D’Souza chimed in.
The world governing swimming body isn’t the only governing organization to start implementing stricter rules on trans athletes, with the governing body for rugby, boxing, and track and field also implementing similar rules.
