Hannah Arensman lost her podium spot to a biological male at the US Cyclocross Championships. Photo: Jack Robert for The Telegraph
Hannah Arensman radiates a love for her sport that is too pure to be faked or made up. As the fourth of nine children, growing up in Morganton, North Carolina, she gravitated towards cycling as an outlet for her boundless energy. “I could never sit still,” she muses. “In particular, I was excited about cyclocross, the beautiful world where road and mountain bikes collide. I liked to be in shape, I liked to go fast, I liked to master the technical part. It's like playing an instrument. When you do it right, it's just great.»
It was a passion she channeled with honor, wearing her country's colors, winning national medals, and even cherishing the dream of representing the United States at the Paris Olympics next summer. And yet last December, at the age of 24, she just left. The immediate reason for this decision was not an injury or deterioration in form, but the fact that in her last race at the US cyclocross championship in Connecticut, she lost her place on the podium to a biological man. “There are a million different levels of pain,” she says.
Arensman was fourth on that winter day in Hartford, two seconds behind Austin Killips, who caused worldwide furor this month by becoming the first transgender cyclist to win a globally sanctioned multi-day race at the Gila Tour in New Mexico. She had reason to believe it wasn't a fair fight, given that Killips had all the residual benefits of male puberty — bigger bones, stronger muscles, longer leverage, more lung capacity — and only started playing the sport in 2019 after How did you start taking hormones? therapy by blogging about the transition called Oestro Junkie.
Austin Killips (right)'s participation in professional women's cyclocross forced Hannah Arensman out of the sport. Photo: Getty Images/David Pintens
And today she finally spoke, too scalded with a sense of injustice to take the path of least resistance. This is a very bold move given the hectic atmosphere in which transgender sporting debates take place. The fear of being accused of being transphobic is so strong that at the elite level no active female athlete dares to give her name out of concern for justice. Just last week, Inga Thompson, a retired three-time U.S. Olympic champion, was accused by the Cynisca cycling team of «damaging its brand and reputation» for opposing the presence of pubescent males in women's sports.
< p>But Arensman breaks the omerta, realizing that the fight is no longer hers alone and that, ultimately, the holiness and integrity of the female category is at stake. “I realized that if the opportunity presented itself to say something on behalf of other women, then I would take it,” she says. “It's been going on long enough, it's gone far enough. He should never have gotten to this point, it shouldn't have been allowed to happen. Someone has to take responsibility. This is not a fair sport, and the governing bodies, who should have made the rules from the very beginning, must be aware of this. The very people who are supposed to protect our sport don't.»
Her first inkling of a coming storm came last year when Killips, previously unknown in the world of cyclocross, where most riders start from childhood, began win on national fields, despite glaring shortcomings in technology. «Killips doesn't have a lot of skills, but he stayed with us because of his strength,» Arensman says.
“There was someone here who didn’t get along very well with the elite guys, but got along great with the elite women. It was depressing to know that Killips was taking hormones to suppress testosterone. Every woman in those races trained so hard to be there. There are not very many of us. Yes, it's nice to receive payments equal to men's, and to see how the number of women is growing. But then for a biological male to step in and start filming our tapes? There is no justice in this.”
'There is a clear unfair advantage'
Sometimes rage consumed her. “I had no desire to be around Killips,” she admits. “It was getting harder and harder for me to hang around the finish line to congratulate my rivals because there was Killips parading in front of the cameras. It was disgusting. What are you celebrating? You are simply beating women and you have a clear unfair advantage.”
Scientific evidence supports her claim. The current policy of the International Cycling Union is that biological men can race as women if they can prove they have reduced their serum testosterone levels below 2.5 nanomoles per liter over a two-year period. The average testosterone level in women is between 0.5 and 2.4 nmol/l, while the British Journal of Sports Medicine indicates that men with transgender identification retain higher heart and lung function than women, even after 14 years of hormone therapy. .
“We helped her find the door. She will not be missed'
The angrier Arensman became, the more threats there were for her to agree. On December 11, the day of what was to be her last race, members of the John Brown Gun Club (a left-wing group that claims guns are a necessary defense against the armed right) mobilized on the track, raising transgender pride flags. and wear balaclavas to hide their identity. “Sounds weird for shooting clubs,” the Connecticut chapter tweeted, “until you realize there is a huge TERF [trans-exclusive radical feminist] problem in cycling.” The same extremists later celebrated Arensman's retirement by writing, «I hope we helped her find the door. Nobody will forget her.”
Today @rijbgc, @baystatejbgc and we went to the USAC National Cyclocross Championship in Hartford. Sounds weird for the JBGC until you find out that there is a major TERF problem in cycling and a related pursuit campaign. pic.twitter.com/JLm5XGU59B
— CT John Brown Gun Club (@ctjbgc) December 11, 2022
Reminding bullying, Arensman can only despair of the venomous backlash that any attempt to discuss the transgender controversy provokes. “It only reinforces the total disrespect,” she says. “When you have to resort to physical violence to keep other people in check so you can do whatever you want, something is seriously wrong. It is a form of tyranny.”
Her farewell event turned out to be something she'd rather forget. It wasn't just that Killips had stripped her of her national medal, but that some dubious tricks had been used along the way. In one video, Killips can be seen throwing herself at Arensman, knocking her off balance. While Killips dismissed this characterization, Arensman would later highlight the incident in a Supreme Court filing, citing «several physical interactions».
You are referring to the same Austin Killips who competes with women and goes out of his way to push a cyclist off her bike in the middle of a race, causing her to eventually retire. sports together? Oh word. https://t.co/1wKOop9yiX pic.twitter.com/o4JcsZCo9B
— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) April 26, 2023
Her testimony faded. «It's getting more and more discouraging to lose to a man with an androgenized body that inherently gives him a clear advantage over me no matter how hard I train,» she wrote. «I felt deeply angry, disappointed, forgotten and humiliated.»
Two Sides of Hannah Arensman — Once a Professional Cyclist , now retired. Photo: Jack Robert for The Telegraph
“I fully expect that in cycling, as a contact sport, you will get hit at some point,” she says. “But when you get run over by someone who was born a man and is over 6 feet tall, it’s different. I tried to continue the race so that it didn't cross my mind at all. However, that single incident captured on video seemed unnecessary. At best, it was a complete lack of manipulative skills. Women who have been doing this for 15 or 20 years have accumulated a lot of technical ability. But there is only a certain point that we can reach with our muscles. Besides, we can't compete.»
She finished the race sandwiched between two transgender riders, with Killips in third and Jenna Lingwood, who raced in the men's races as «Jimmy» as recently as 2018, in fifth. Her sister Allison, also a very experienced international cyclist, wept as she watched, convinced that Hanna had been tricked. “My family was torn to pieces,” she says. “I know so many women are outraged by this, but they are afraid to say anything for fear of losing sponsors, being beaten up on social media, the main platform to get sponsorship in the first place. So they won’t say anything, even if they are furious.”
'I don’t think it’s necessary to sacrifice sports'
Gradually the atmosphere changes. Last month, Bud Light ran a promotion with Dylan Mulvaney, a Californian transgender influencer with 10.8 million TikTok followers who was praised by President Biden at the White House. The company produced cans of beer bearing Mulvaney's face, emphasizing the activist's «365 days of girlhood». Public reaction was furious, with Bud Light sales falling 23% the following week. The response taught a harsh lesson for Nike, which, in an attempt to trumpet its all-encompassing reputation, paid Mulvaney to advertise its sports bras, prompting former British Olympic swimmer Sharron Davis to call for a boycott.
“The transgender community is very vocal,” Arensman says. “But I don't think you should sacrifice sport against the wishes of the majority for the sake of the minority. That's not how it works.» Indeed, a baffling feature of the endless introspection in sports about transgender issues is that, for all the horror of athletes when they raise their heads over the parapet, the concern about biological men taking trophies and prize money from women coincides with the majority opinion. When Marion Clinier, the French road racing champion, tried to pressure the UCI to toughen up its stance on transgender people last year, she submitted a survey in which 92% of female cyclists agreed with her.
Bud Light's advertising campaign featured powerful transgender Dylan Mulvaney. Photo: Instagram/Dylan Mulvaney
Trying to sort out this contradiction, Arensman explains: “We now have a culture where if you say or do something that is contrary to the status quo, where most people are noisy, you just get beaten up verbally or even physically.” She cites the case of Riley Gaines, who last year swam against Leah Thomas, a transgender swimmer who was ranked No. 554 in the U.S. men's but won the national collegiate title in the women's 200-yard freestyle. Gaines described harboring burning bitterness over Thomas' involvement, but when she showed up to talk about it at San Francisco State University last month, she was approached by protesters shouting «transgender rights are human rights» before security took her off campus. .
“When I look at it, I understand why people are scared,” Arensman says. “There should be a protected speech zone, but it is actually being attacked.”
This deplatformism of what trans lobbyists call «gender-critical feminists» is far from being an exclusively American phenomenon. Oxford University is currently in the throes of controversy over the Oxford Union's decision to invite academic Kathleen Stock to speak. Ms. Stock, who has called gender variability a «social contagion», is scheduled to speak at a debating club on May 30, but students have tried to cancel her speech. It's no surprise that young women watching such scenes wonder if it's worth the effort to speak up.
Arensman, however, refuses to be muzzled. «Now that I'm retired, people really don't have anything they can stop me for and say, 'If you want to keep racing, you better shut up.' No. I'm done with sports. I've been a cyclist for 12 years and that's it. Now I can freely say what should have been said a long time ago.
“I have a younger sister, she is only 13 years old. With your younger siblings, you feel somewhat responsible for making sure they are protected. And I wouldn't want to see her in a sport where she's trying to compete with the guys in her field. This is not true. Last season I was happy in those races where I competed against the girls. I thought, “This is like the old days. I race people who are biologically similar to me.» I know that I can suppress my absolute efforts, and wherever the chips land, it will be true. I feel sorry for the next generation of girls that are growing up. We need fair competition. It's so important in learning to persevere, in learning to push yourself instead of taking the easy way.»
'More heart, more lungs, more than anything'
The relevance of these arguments is reinforced in sports. Last week, Telegraph Sport uncovered the case of Sarah Gibson, a transgender rower who took the place of a biological woman on the Cambridge reserve team at the 2015 Boat Race. British Rowing has given its 31,000 members the right to vote on whether to limit the female category to exclusively those born female, with a board meeting to ratify the decision due next week. In cycling, the assurances are more vague: the UCI has pledged to revise the debate only in August.
But the problems show no signs of receding. Emily Bridges, the Welsh transgender cyclist who broke the junior men's time trial record, hoped to compete in the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham last summer, just a year after starting testosterone-lowering therapy. Ultimately, the UCI refused to change her license from men's to women's, but Bridges refused to give up hope of being accepted into the sport as a woman. Likewise, Killips, Arensman's old nemesis, is improving at such a rate that he can count on a place in the Olympics. Such outcomes, according to Arensman, would be completely wrong.
“A guy, even mediocre in the men's events, is more than capable of breaking records and getting on the podium in the women's races,” she says. “That's why we have a division into male and female categories. Our bodies are very different. One is biologically stronger than the other. Even if you try to stop this growth, [a man's] body has already undergone these changes after [he] went through puberty. They are permanent.
«Women are really demoralized when someone says, 'If I dilute my body like that, I can compete with you.' Nobody wants to compete in such a situation. How many people want to compete with someone who says, «Oh, I held back the whole time to make you feel good»? When I race, I want to know that I'm doing my best, that you're doing your best, that we're equal. We can go home and say, «Well, today your legs were better than mine.» Boy versus girl? It's not the same.»
Such was the heartache of Arensman's latest act in cycling, and one wonders if it poisoned her perception of the sport, which she once considered a «great» getaway. “No, I will always love him,” she says. “The reason I say something about it is because I would like other people to experience it for themselves too. There's the joy of being out in nature, pushing yourself to the limit, congratulating yourself after you've been beaten by saying, «Next time I'll take your skin.»
While her career ended in a way she never did could not imagine, Arensman is optimistic that a broader shift in cultural attitudes is taking place. There is growing recognition, she said, that the transgender rights campaign should not automatically give biological males the right to jump into women's sports on a whim. «I hope that more than the silent majority will find their voice to say, 'Actually, this is wrong.' game conditions.
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