Olympian Sharron Davies - The Fight for Women’s Sport
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Summary
Sharon Davis is a former professional swimmer who won a silver medal competing for Great Britain at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. She also won a Commonwealth medal in the 1500m and a Gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in 1992 and a Commonwealth Gold at the 1992 London Olympics in which she became the first British woman to swim at the Olympics. In this episode, she talks about her career, her family life and her thoughts on women in sport.
Transcript
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If you have a parent that turns up with their daughter to play a rugby game
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and they recognise that there's a male on the opposite team,
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I'm a sensible dad, I do not want my daughter having her neck broken,
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And one of the things I find the most heartbreaking
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is that we've had a massive increase in primary schools,
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now just having sports days, which are mixed sex.
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I've lost count the number of parents that have contacted me
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with their 11-year-old daughter who's come back from sports day
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and said, not a single little girl won a race today.
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We turn around and say that we have to pretend somebody is a woman.
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Are people going to say that they're 10 years older or 10 years younger?
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I worry terribly about free press and free speech.
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And, you know, if we lose free speech, we lose democracy.
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And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
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Our brilliant guest today is a former professional swimmer who won a silver medal competing for
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this country, Great Britain. Sharon Davis, welcome to Trigonometry.
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Oh, it's so good to have you on. I've been meaning to have you on the show for a while.
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You've been saying your opinion about interesting things. So we wanted to talk to you about that.
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Before we do, though, who are you? How are you, where you are? What has been the journey
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through life that brings you to be here talking to us?
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Gosh, it's a long journey. So I did my first Olympic Games when I was 13,
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which was um yeah nearly nearly 50 odd years ago now and uh my my whole career really i suppose
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has been swimming in olympic games and every four years i get to do another one so i've done
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30 or 13 will be paris um so you know sort of four-year increments obviously won my silver
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medal in moscow that you mentioned but obviously commonwealth medals european medals world medals
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all the different medals on the way but much of my youth being in a swimming pool smelling of
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chlorine very very clean child and then I went to university in America after I won my my silver
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because there was nothing really in this country there's no lottery funding in those days so it
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was either the dole or the universities in America but to maintain my scholarship I needed to swim
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and I just needed a break you know I needed six months off from doing six hours a day of training
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and to be an 18 year old for a little while and that wasn't really allowed and I did a tv program
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called give us a clue which you won't remember because you're well too young but um it was just
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a quiz show, got paid 40 quid and got branded a professional and wasn't allowed to compete
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anymore. So I spent eight years away kind of working in television and doing all sorts
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of different things. And then I was at the Olympic Games in Seoul with Mary Peters sharing
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a flat. And Mary said, don't spend the rest of your life saying what if. So at this stage
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I was like 28, 29. And I thought, well, if I don't do it now, I'll never be able to do
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it. So I got back in the water and made another Olympics and won a few more Commonwealth medals
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and then met Derek Redman at the Olympic Games in 92
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And we just ended up sitting on a beach that night
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and then I pulled my hamstring and I was going,
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and then we got together after that and we have two kids.
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We're not together now, but we're still good friends.
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And then I've got a little one as well who's 16.
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The rest of it is kind of working in television,
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I get to take a microphone in front of all the swimmers,
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Yeah, and just recently written my book, Unfair Play,
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about the challenges to women's sport, which has always been there.
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No, because obviously I was competing during the East German era.
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So I won an awful lot of silver and bronze medals behind East Germans.
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Tell people more about that, because the younger audience may not be familiar.
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Frances and I joke about it because I'm from Russia
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and this sort of Russian, Eastern German cheating and all of that is kind of in our DNA.
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But tell us more, because people may not be familiar with this.
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What were the challenges to competition for women like you and others in the past?
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Yeah, so during the 70s and the 80s, the old East Germany basically were putting an awful lot of nasty steroids,
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testosterone into their young girls as a programme really to win in sport.
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They totally dominated in the women's events, obviously, because what they could do was they could create a sort of a male puberty
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by giving these young girls these terrible drugs from about 11, and with massive side effects.
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Many of them have been really poorly, some have even died.
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This was allowed to go on for a very long time.
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I've met her since and she's got liver problems and kidney problems
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and fertility problems and all sorts of things.
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They had big court cases when the war came down in 89.
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I mean, because they would turn up, you know, at a major competition.
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They had deep voices and, you know, shadows on their chins,
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and they swam like males you know they would do male equivalent times um then they disappear again
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and we'd see another one at the next major competition you know and they would have no
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hardly any success in the men's races and this massive success in the women's races so
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at european level they won 92 percent of the women's medals throughout that whole period of
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time and practically none in the men's and the ilc went well they're not doing anything
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and it was really really frustrating i mean really frustrating and i suppose that's why
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I speak out now it's the biggest reason I speak out now because I had friends that came forth
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behind three East Germans and their whole lives would have been different if they'd been Olympic
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champions and you use that term really frustrating but it's it's more than that isn't it Sharon
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surely you know you've dedicated your life to this your childhood you every day eight hours a day and
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all of a sudden somebody cheats yeah it's more than frustrating isn't it it's the injustice of
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it I suppose it was the injustice of it for all of us because even at the time we knew that they
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weren't doing it kind of I I'm reluctant to say not knowing because I think they must have known
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something was going on then their bodies were changing their voices were changing you know
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they're going to ask questions they're not stupid however there was very little they could do about
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it so they weren't in a position where they could control it because what we showed I did a
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documentary um a few years ago and we went to the Stasi files and and we could see that they were
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making about a nine percent improvement so you could take a very average swimmer a female swimmer
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if you make you know nine percent improvement you make them world record holders so they had this
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total you know they had an infinite number of young girls they could just move into the system
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fill them full of these terrible drugs and have them as world champions so they didn't need to
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look after their best swimmers because they had a train of just young girls you know that they
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were removing from their families and putting them into training programs so it was horrendous what
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was done and you know there's there was always two victims there was the victims that were cheated
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like myself and my friends um and there were these young girls that were incredibly badly let down
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you know by the IOC and why didn't the IOC get involved then why did they not because if it was
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as clear as day and it was really does sound like it why did they not do something and they've still
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done nothing now so we've had all the evidence we've got all the paperwork we had Germans they
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had court cases where I think 25 million euros were given out in compensation we've had um you
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You know, admissions of guilt, I've got admissions of guilt
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And you just kind of, you just, I find it beggar's belief
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when they're supposed to be promoting fair sport, you know.
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and obviously you don't have to go into, you know,
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but I think one of the things that often gets missed
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in this whole conversation is what sort of impact
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in a competitive environment where it's not a percentage thing,
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It's not like, well, you know, this person got promoted unfairly and they get 3% more money and you don't.
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And the gap between those two is, as you say, life changing.
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Yeah, it's absolutely the commercial gap between being an Olympic champion and being fourth
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and no one ever remembering who you were is huge.
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You know, it's absolutely huge. It's totally life changing.
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And so it's that ability to have that opportunity, which I was not prepared to let happen all over again.
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the same end result in the fact that male puberty is enabling someone to have an advantage
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you know one was artificial with the east german system one is a natural process now
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and i just thought i can't let this happen again i can't sit by and watch a whole another generation
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of young girls miss out and it's worse really because in lots of ways with the transgender
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argument is um you've got all of the pathways you've got all of the master's events you've got
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it across every sport across every country whereas in my day it was just at elite level
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and it was just predominantly in say swimming rowing and track and field you know it wasn't
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going to affect the british national championships or the american european you know college trials
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or any of those things whereas now it's affecting all young women across the whole world they're not
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getting their opportunities to their success and it might be an olympic medal which is huge or it
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might just be the fact that you make it to the national the nc2as and you get to put this on
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your you know on your cv for the rest of your life which opens a door for you when you're going for a
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job application they're losing those opportunities and that's not fair and of course in america
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just to flesh that point out a little bit because of the way the whole sporting and college system
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are linked you could you could get to college that you might not be able to afford and get a
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really good education based on your athletic performance and yet here you are competing with
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people who are male-bodied to put it very which is the truth the truth is that they are male-bodied
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then that will never change their biological sex will always be male no matter how much
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testosterone they reduce no matter how much plastic surgery they might choose to have
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and again that doesn't happen in sport they don't have plastic surgery they don't have genitals
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removed you know and in a lot of cases they try to reduce testosterone for incredibly short periods
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of time uh like leo thomas you know with the nc2as leo was asked to reduce her testosterone levels to
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10 nanomals of testosterone per litre well that's 10 times what i have and that was only for one
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year. I mean, so the difference is just ridiculous. That person goes from being 460th in America,
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not in the world. In the world, they would be not in the top 2,000. In America, 200th to being
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number one and beating three American silver medalists in the space of a year. So, I mean,
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a very mediocre male athlete becomes a very elite female athlete. And all those elite female
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athletes that spent 10 years of their life making huge sacrifices are just expected to step aside.
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And Sharon, when was the first moment you thought, we've got a problem here?
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Up until 2015, the IOC allowed males to identify females
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if they had got a certificate and had had genital surgery.
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I mean, to the point now where the IOC don't even suggest
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they just say you're not supposed to suggest that anyone that's biologically male has an advantage
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well that is the most ludicrous thing to say because we have men and women's races
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so if there's no advantage why are we having men and women's races why don't we just have 100
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meters on the track you know we know why because we have two sexes and so therefore to offer
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opportunity across society we have all these different types of categories and that's not
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just male female that's age categories that's power classifications that's weight categories
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in boxing it's all sorts of different categories to offer fair opportunity across society and did
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in 2015 did the IOC actually give an explanation because we all know the IOC is how can I put it
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a little bit murky let's say because we don't want to be sued by them they're a little bit
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murky with their practices allegedly yeah we go down that route no not really I mean I think
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their problem is they're just they're just worried about being sued they're more interested in the
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politics and the funding i mean i don't understand how an organization's sole job is to offer you
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know fair sports just decided that women's sport didn't deserve to be fair anymore do you
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sometimes pinch yourself yeah all the time every day i wake up and go how are we here
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how has this happened why has this happened who's allowed this to happen you know it just does not
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makes and how is everybody so scared when not a single piece of science backs up the inclusion
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of anyone that's gone through male puberty into women's sport as being fair we've got 18 studies
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in the world the last came out of brazil in september of last year one of the biggest
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and that showed even after 14 years of reducing testosterone we still had no parity between people
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that were male or female there was still hardly any loss of advantage so you know there's not a
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single piece of study that's that supports that inclusion and yet here we are it's funny you say
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that because we just had the comedian simon evans on the show who he in his latest show he talked
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about uh having problems with his testosterone levels and he had to get testosterone replacement
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and when he was at his bottom he qualified to compete in women's competitions and you just go
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this doesn't make any sense it makes no sense and it's also like you know like boiling an egg
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so once someone who's male's gone through puberty you can't unboil that egg right so reducing
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testosterone doesn't make any difference and it might mean you don't get any bigger or any faster
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but then it's all relative to how much training you do anyway so if you or how much injury you've
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got all sorts of different variables you know that are involved in someone's physical performance and
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whether they're you know a scale of one to ten um and yeah just suppressing testosterone in no shape
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form you know makes it fair competition so you said where did this come from how did this come
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about who let it happen do you have any thoughts on that um i have a lot of thoughts i mean i try
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to concentrate on sport because it's what i know i know 50 years of you know being involved in elite
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sport i know inside out back to front i've spoken to a lot of scientists a lot of extremely well
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known very successful scientists um and people that know what they're talking about it's important
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to know the background of all of that I try very hard to just stick to this area because it's you
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know what it's like it's a minefield out there okay and I want people to to listen respectfully
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to what I'm saying and that's the reason I did the book because I wanted to put all of the evidence
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all of the gotchas all of the science into one place that people that want to try and fight this
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and fight for their daughters and their sisters and you know for their friends to have fair sport
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where they could have it a bit like an encyclopedia and they could go to and they could get all of
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that information and also wanted to show the correlation between the east german era and what
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happened and why that happened because of artificial testosterone and to show the similarities
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you know of what will happen again if we turn around and allow unfair sport and i've you know
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i was in the lucky position i suppose where i could afford to take a bit of a hit and i have
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seriously taken a hit but i felt that it was really worth it you know i wouldn't be able to
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live with myself if I didn't so Sharon and you've mentioned about the science and we've touched on
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it a little bit so let's do a deep dive into it what is the difference between someone like a
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Leah Thomas and someone like a Riley Gaines yeah good good good knowledge I like it so Riley and
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and Leah tied for fifth place and and that's where Riley's got all this bravery from because she was
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asked to literally not accept her trophy and was told that the trophy could go to Leah and Riley
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would have to wait for hers you know and and i think she and i'm so proud of her for doing that
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because it's really hard as a competing athlete to come at the beginning of your career when
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you can be blacklisted so bad to go forward in your career i mean the university was horrendous
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it blackmailed all its athletes who were being asked to train change next to a six foot four
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biologically male with full male genitalia and were told that they would be sent to a psychiatrist
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if they complained that's what the university of pennsylvania said wow yeah that's like so that's
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the stuff they used to do in the soviet union is like if you don't agree with us you go to the
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psych hospital yeah that's insane yeah it's insane it's seriously insane it's so depressing
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that that was what came out of america that you know it really is and so riley's been very brave
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to come forward and to speak um the difference at olympic level in sport is between about 10 and 30
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percent. So something like middle distance running is 10 percent. Weightlifting is up there at 30
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percent. So the more explosive an event is, the more the difference between male and female
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biology. Something like high jump, long jump, quite explosive, about 20, 22 percent. A male of equal
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weight will hit 160 percent harder than a female. And that's onto a female bone structure, which is
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less dense. Women have a bigger cue angle because of the size of our hips. So that means that we
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end up with six times more knee injuries than things like football because we obviously have
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this angle but it means that a male will have more ability to put power through their legs on things
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like sprinting on striding on a bike in particular it's a big advantage so these are all things that
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reducing testosterone makes no difference to whatsoever so it's um it's it's massive you know
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when you think that um the nine percent that these german women meant that they were unbelievably
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dominant to the point of 92 percent of all the european medals and not 10 is the lowest that
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we've got you know presently between male and female performance um yeah i mean it's it's
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catastrophic it means that half a length of the pool and olympic medals are won by hundreds of
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a second so and also as well there's a lung capacity issue as well yeah lung capacity
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hemoglobin levels hands feet you know leo thomas six foot four huge great hands huge great feet
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those are your paddles so you know all of those things yes there is the odd very tall female but
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it's you know six foot four in swimming for a man is fairly average that's not average for a woman
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the women is about six foot we're a tall breed I mean each sport let's be honest you've only got
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to look at the olympic games you know you don't get six foot four gymnasts you don't get you know
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four foot six basketball players or volleyball players so so to be the best in the world your
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physiology has pretty much got to be right to do that sport um so yes swimmers are fairly tall but
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we're not that tall you know women are on the whole about five i'm five ten so five ten five
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11 6 for most sprinter female sprinters will be around that um distance swimmers can be a little
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bit shorter but the guys are often 6 4 6 5 6 6. And why is it that female female athletes I mean
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there are some Riley Gaines is a great example of this haven't stood up and gone
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to be brutally honest this is taking the piss um unfortunately a lot of them are made to sign
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contracts. So they have contracts with their governing bodies, which are their associations,
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and that doesn't enable them to say anything that the association thinks would be derogative or
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would cause problems for them. We also have contracts with their sponsors. So again,
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that would stipulate the same sort of things. It's made very plain to them that it's not
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recommended that they speak out. And so that's why it's really important that we have these
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anonymous polls but it took seven years for any governing body to ask a female athlete how they
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felt about enabling males to be in their races and you alluded to the some of the things you've
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lost for speaking about this issue can you talk a little bit about that and because i think it
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ties into why you're in a much more comfortable position you you can't have your potential dream
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of an olympic medal taken away you've been there you've done it yeah etc but for these young women
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there's that punishment so what's happened with you first of all um just a loss of work you know
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trans activists are can be very vicious they will literally find out where you're working who you're
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working with and just attack and attack and attack and ring and ring and phone and send letters and
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just do everything in their power to make it very difficult for companies to work with you
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because companies at the end they just don't want the agro in most cases you know so if it's going
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to be between me or three other famous british female athletes they'll pick somebody else because
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they just don't want the aggro um so and then i had charities that they did exactly the same
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to charities that i've worked with for 30 years um yeah they just made my life hell i mean the
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worst one is when they attack my family you know because at the end of the day i suppose that's my
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biggest soft spot is my kids i love them to pieces and i would you know die for them like all of us
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would but um most of the time it's it's it's vile misogyny and I my mum sadly died about four years
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ago and she left me the money which has kept me going and I look at I think to my mum my mum was
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looking down on me now she would be very proud of me I mean I remember having a conversation with my
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mum when she bought her first house with my dad and she wasn't allowed to be on the mortgage
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So my mum's generation and my grandmother's generation
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were the ones that fought for us to have the equality that we have today.
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And I just think at the moment we're going backwards
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And the misogyny that seems to be around in the world at the moment
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is just extraordinary and every day it gets worse.
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Well, and that's the thing because I think, you know,
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there are elements that sometimes people throw that word around
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But on this issue, I have to observe that women who speak up seem to get way, way, way worse treatment than men do.
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Like, I know lots of men who've made the points that you've made as stridently.
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More stridently, and they don't have half the nonsense that you get.
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Because I think it's mainly males that do the attacking.
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it's mainly males that sit at home on their you know on their social media or um are ringing
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companies up it's it's this this misogyny it is there is no other word and i'm like you i i hate
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using words you know like racist and misogynist or bully unless it really applies because i think
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all we ever do otherwise is dumb down these words but at the moment these words are just used to
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beat everybody over the head to silence everybody constantly you know and and and it's we're just
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living in such strange times and i worry terribly about free press and and free speech and you know
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if we lose free speech we lose democracy because democracy is based on free speech it's that
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ability to be able to tell to speak at to have a platform and for people to say that's rubbish
00:23:10.080
but we need to be able to say it in the first place and let's delve into this you say viral
00:23:15.540
misogyny and i think it's really important that people actually understand what you mean by that
00:23:19.740
because there'll probably be people at home going oh he's being oversensitive blah blah blah so
00:23:25.600
Well, sport is particularly run by men as well.
00:23:27.740
So in a lot of cases, particularly misogynistic sports
00:23:29.980
like cycling and cricket, they're two of the worst sports
00:23:32.360
that have literally just turned around in cricket
00:23:35.940
So all you have to do as a male to play on the women's cricket team
00:23:44.260
I mean, that's how crazy it is as far as the ECB is concerned.
00:23:49.140
That's how little regard they have for their women cricketers.
00:23:51.780
I mean, women cricketers have never even played a test at Lourdes in this country.
00:23:57.240
So, and then cycling, again, a very misogynistic sport.
00:23:59.720
Wasn't, you know, cycling wasn't even in the Olympics for women until the 1980s.
00:24:04.060
So the book, you know, and then some of the things, I found the book quite extraordinary
00:24:06.860
because I'm doing so much research and it had to be so carefully reffed, obviously,
00:24:14.000
But, you know, in the 1980s, when I was competing, there wasn't a single female sitting on the IOC committees.
00:24:19.260
you know so and again even today the females that we have sitting on the IOC committees are from the
00:24:24.700
Middle East who aren't even in most cases doing women's sport because they're not allowed to
00:24:29.900
I mean you know it's just it's crazy so unfortunately that's the problem a lot of
00:24:34.960
sports are run by men who don't have the same value of women's sports as women do if this was
00:24:40.720
a problem which was affecting male sport men's sport it would be sorted out if you remember the
00:24:44.800
situation we have with the costumes a few years ago you know they brought these suits out and they
00:24:48.960
were making a vast difference and Michael Phelps went I'm not racing anymore unless you get rid
00:24:52.480
of these suits it was sorted out within a few months and again with the shoes when they brought
00:24:56.340
out the carbon shoes you know again it was sorted out very quickly when Oster Pistorius said I want
00:25:01.380
to race with the guys with my blades they went no because they might have got beaten so you know
00:25:05.700
it gets sorted the moment affects men's sport but with women's sport let's just we'll just let it go
00:25:12.340
because it keeps all this political people happy and it keeps all the PC brigade happy and so
00:25:15.740
they've literally kicked women's sport to the side and not given it the same respect that they give
00:25:20.880
men's sport and at the moment you know the thing that i always say is that presently we are literally
00:25:26.640
saying to our female athletes you are not worthy of fair sport and do you think it's misogyny but
00:25:32.620
also do you think partly it's money in that they make a lot more for male sports male male athletes
00:25:39.480
tend to be on the whole bigger stars they generate more advertising income etc etc so when michael
00:25:45.320
phelps goes i ain't doing it i mean not in swimming they say not in swimming because yeah
00:25:49.800
michael phelps is a big star but then so is katie ledecky now so you know in swimming we have a
00:25:56.700
sport where men and women race together we train together and we have the same olympic games and
00:26:00.500
we're on the same program and the television cameras are watching the women's race and then
00:26:03.660
they're watching the men's race exactly the same as they do with track and field so yes you have
00:26:07.460
the big stars but things like football rugby cricket yeah they all you know very male dominated
00:26:12.240
big airtime big money massive money in football i mean outrageous you know money in football
00:26:16.680
about 11 000 men earn a living from professional sport in england great britain at the moment
00:26:22.600
1 000 women so we already have a much smaller piece of the cake you know our cake is tiny in
00:26:27.680
comparison with to what men get and now we're being told we can't even have that well right i
00:26:32.200
mean the piece of the cake thing is you know it's irrelevant to what you're talking about which is
00:26:38.780
fair play right i mean the i was never a professional athlete obviously so i'm telling
00:26:44.600
you things you already know but it's like the whole point of sport is that it's about fair play
00:26:51.440
and you see who's best on the merit that's the whole point that's why people love it that's why
00:26:55.480
people watch it that's why people part it there's a purity to it that's the beauty of sport isn't it
00:27:00.940
fair that's the whole part i mean to be honest with you fair should be across life shouldn't it
00:27:04.440
you know sport often is just an analogy for life you know and I and you know when I was working
00:27:09.540
and I still do work and work has definitely got a bit better over the last year but I used to do a
00:27:13.980
lot of motivational and corporate work talking about how sport and business were very similar
00:27:18.120
you know it's about the hard work it's about the preparation it's about your team support the
00:27:21.740
people behind you looking after your team you know and setting targets and focus and all these things
00:27:26.000
that apply to life in general and resilience you know we have our kids are not very resilient and
00:27:31.640
And so sport is really important, not only for health and fitness
00:27:35.080
and fighting obesity, but also for resilience, for mental health.
00:27:38.920
And it's a real trick that's being missed at the moment
00:27:41.000
with regards to, you know, trying to help our youth
00:27:43.320
who have these increasing mental health issues constantly.
00:27:47.100
Resilience is probably what I got out of sport racing,
00:27:55.240
And it teaches kids a very important, two very important lessons.
00:28:01.640
which, you know. And to lose with grace. And to lose with grace, absolutely. And to accept loss.
00:28:06.300
And you see a lot of people who are my age or even older, and you'd see them lose,
00:28:10.320
even win, and you go, there's not a lot of dignity here. Yeah, I mean, I think what sport
00:28:15.740
teaches you as well is it teaches you that you actually learn from your failures. You know,
00:28:21.080
you mustn't be afraid of failing because failing teaches us a lesson. So then we go home, okay,
00:28:25.960
why did I fail? How do I make it better? What preparation, what hard work do I need to do
00:28:31.020
to get better and i think again we kid love a lot of our kids and the fact they're never allowed to
00:28:36.820
fail we're frightened if they fail but actually we're not doing them any favors by not allowing
00:28:41.340
them to fail you know it's a lovely chinese proverb that says fall over nine times get up you
00:28:45.980
know get up 10 and and that's yeah that's really important that ability to get back up and go again
00:28:51.320
and what is the ioc's explanation for why they're allowing this what is they don't there isn't one
00:28:58.220
what is the you know the trans activists what's their argument what is the what do they say their
00:29:04.120
argument is if a trans woman says they're a woman they're a woman and so therefore they should be
00:29:07.720
able to compete in the women's competition and my answer will be well let's read let's rename the
00:29:11.500
category then let's go natal female and open and so my answer to the whole problem is go we'll have
00:29:16.920
a female protected classification which is biological female and we have an open and
00:29:21.240
inclusive category for everybody however you would like to identify and i'm not transphobic i have i
00:29:26.600
have friends that have you know two trans two transgender daughters and i'm a great believer
00:29:32.840
that people should be able to express themselves however they they want to with safety and dignity
00:29:36.960
100 however there has to be fairness for everybody across society and you can't just trump it all by
00:29:43.360
just going well because i say i'm this i am this you know and what worries me is where does this
00:29:47.140
stop if we turn around and say that we have to pretend somebody is a woman and i my definition
00:29:53.920
if one was adult human female, then what's next?
00:29:58.820
You know, are people going to say that they're 10 years older
00:30:07.400
But so the thing we need to do is to respect people
00:30:10.020
that are transgender women and transgender men.
00:30:14.640
In sport, it's quite fascinating because if we have a transgender man,
00:30:17.740
so a biological female that wants to compete, i.e. the NC2As,
00:30:25.600
that transgender man still opted to race with the women,
00:30:32.800
So if women can say, you identify however you like,
00:30:40.560
why can't that happen in men's races just the same?
00:30:44.380
I have a friend who's a former semi-professional boxer, female,
00:30:47.700
and we were talking about this, and I was sort of saying,
00:30:50.060
like we have a word for injecting substances into your body that enhances your performance
00:30:55.060
there's a word for that and whatever motivation you have for doing it is irrelevant because it
00:31:00.460
enhances your performance right it seems like a pretty basic concept that people would understand
00:31:06.460
do you feel that there is progress being made on this issue we have seen some changes around
00:31:12.360
the edges certain competitions certain athletes there has been yeah definitely it's taken quite
00:31:17.200
a while you know and a lot of pushing um a lot of pushing back by a lot of very brave people
00:31:22.420
um so world aquatics were the first of the olympic sports really the big olympic sports which i was
00:31:29.320
very proud of um actually world rugby were the first to say we're going to protect the female
00:31:34.080
athletes because safety was an option okay so we're talking to go back to that boxing thing
00:31:38.040
you know hitting 160 percent harder imagine running at each other on a rugby pitch you know
00:31:41.880
the damage to people's necks the spinal cords and things like that i mean seriously in contact sports
00:31:46.540
it was a massive accident waiting to happen and there are still lots of contact sports are not
00:31:50.400
protecting their female athletes football being one men kicks 50% harder so you know it's this
00:31:57.340
they are going to be life-changing injuries if something's not done so and then track and field
00:32:01.980
Saab earlier this year protected track and field as well British triathlon have been in very very
00:32:06.740
strong British volleyball been very strong we're hoping well cycling will be the next to do it but
00:32:11.980
they have got at the moment 50 50 just in north america alone trans identifying males in women's
00:32:18.320
sport that are winning prizes all over the place british cycling have ever ever no said we're
00:32:23.320
going to protect the female category but things like parkrun parkrun are allowing people to
00:32:27.580
identify however they want and course records women's course records are falling every single
00:32:31.200
weekend across the uk so why why wouldn't parkrun just introduce extra boxes for people to tick i
00:32:38.000
don't get it you know it's an it's it's an easy thing to do people go online to log in and you
00:32:44.080
know to join up and i want more people doing that i think it's a fabulous event but why should women
00:32:49.640
be losing their records to people that are male why can't we just have a box that says transgender
00:32:53.880
woman and transgender men and you have a transgender woman's record and a transgender men's record and
00:32:57.980
a woman's record and a man's record and an under 10s record and you know a master's record or
00:33:02.380
whatever but they're not doing that they're just allowing people to self-id and of course again
00:33:07.320
it's women that will lose out constantly. Do you think, and this is not a particularly nice
00:33:11.640
question, but do you think it might need something drastic, like a woman gets seriously injured and
00:33:17.880
then we have lawsuits involved for the actual real change to be made and people go, enough?
00:33:24.840
And that's what I'm trying to avoid, to be honest with you. That's what, speaking out,
00:33:28.280
I've been trying to, I've been trying to stop there having to be a Leah Thomas in every sport
00:34:02.220
because I mean I was training six hours a day for 10 years of my life I broke my arms broke both
00:34:08.080
bones in both arms my dad's wrapped them in plastic bags and I trained with two broken arms
00:34:12.180
the following year I tore the ligaments in my knee my dad tied my legs together for three months and
00:34:16.480
I trained with my arms only you know I could not have done more than I did it was impossible and
00:34:22.920
most of the time I was training with the guys and I was beating quite a few of the guys but I didn't
00:34:26.940
beat the elite guys you know i was miles away i was 11 away from the elite guys no matter how hard
00:34:33.760
i trained and when you see these people transition for instance like alia thomas do you think i mean
00:34:41.300
it's very difficult to see because there's a certain cynicism that creeps in are you cynical
00:34:47.260
or do you just try and remove yourself from that line of thinking and just stick to the facts
00:34:51.640
i try really hard to stick to the facts you know what i might tell you in private might be very
00:34:56.180
different from what i tell you on film but i try very very hard to be very logical very fact-based
00:35:02.680
very honest um just very straightforward with it all really you know very scientific because i think
00:35:10.200
that's the only way that that we can win ultimately um i don't want there to be a little thomas and
00:35:15.300
every straw and i don't want a woman to lose her life or be you know in a wheelchair to prove that
00:35:20.460
a male is stronger should never be in a contact sport i mean boxing is an interesting one because
00:35:24.820
Boxing have said we will not, the male boxers said
00:35:37.300
the men said we will not do it because we will kill somebody.
00:35:46.780
for that manslaughter charge to come into it eventually.
00:35:52.580
Sharon, do you think this is a blip? Do you think it's just fairly stagnant institutions that didn't see it coming, it blindsided them, it came out of left field and now one of them is going to catch up and then another one and quite quickly this moment will be over?
00:36:13.940
Or do you think this is going to be a battle that you're going to have to keep fighting for some time?
00:36:19.500
I'd like to think if the three big Olympic sports, you know, protect their female classifications,
00:36:24.240
then all of the other sports will find it a little bit easier to follow.
00:36:27.600
But there are a lot of very misogynistic sports at the moment that are run by what I would call the old school,
00:36:32.240
which are dragging their feet. And in North America, it's particularly difficult.
00:36:35.500
I mean, we've even got Biden at the moment talking about, you know, removing the protection of Title IX.
00:36:40.400
Now, Title IX came in in 1972 to protect female sport and to give females the same opportunities to get to university scholarships,
00:36:48.260
you know and all those sort of things to have basketball teams and women's football teams and
00:36:52.720
all the rest of it and they had a massive it had a 300 improvement rate literally within the space
00:36:57.500
of a couple of years in female participation in sport so if we remove that and and allow people
00:37:02.900
to self-identify into women it's going to go backwards and what we find is that women remove
00:37:07.300
themselves so if you if you have um i don't know let's just be hypothetical if you have a parent
00:37:13.740
that turns up with their daughter to play a rugby game and they recognize that there's a male
00:37:18.160
on the opposite team, the parent will remove their child.
00:37:25.180
I do not want my daughter having her neck broken.
00:37:32.860
So less and less women are taking part in things and doing things.
00:37:38.520
And one of the things I find the most heartbreaking
00:37:40.360
is that we've had a massive increase in primary schools
00:37:43.380
now just having sports days, which are mixed sex.
00:37:48.700
that have contacted me with their 11-year-old daughter
00:37:52.740
and said not a single little girl won a race today
00:38:13.000
So they give up, so they don't even bother to try.
00:38:15.140
you know the messages are outrageous and how hard is it to have two races but they're petrified
00:38:22.200
of being accused by you know somebody of not being pc and so they're just taking the lazy option
00:38:28.640
and i don't understand why these teachers these sports clubs these ngbs are not supporting their
00:38:35.640
female athletes well you make the point beautifully i think i really look forward i haven't had a
00:38:40.480
chance to read the book but i'm going to i really look forward to that tell everybody what it what
00:38:44.940
it's called it's called unfair play it's about the battle for women's sport throughout history
00:38:49.960
obviously covering the east german era a lot of horrendous truths which i which really opened my
00:38:55.240
eyes and obviously that where we are right now with the battle with the transgender inclusion
00:38:59.060
perfect uh but we i don't want to wrap up yet because i think what you were talking about with
00:39:04.080
resilience is actually something really really important we're working on a couple of projects
00:39:08.620
around showcasing that but uh you're a professional athlete you talk about i mean
00:39:14.680
wrapping broken arms in plastic bags you know knee injuries just you know that that sounds
00:39:21.420
crazy to a normal person i have to tell you yeah talk to us about mindset talk to us about that
00:39:29.500
like how do you have that level of determination that you're willing to endure that sort of thing
00:39:37.280
I think it's the same as looking at an entrepreneur,
00:39:40.820
made their million, lost it again and gone again.
00:39:47.120
and the sacrifices that are evolved to do that.
00:39:53.520
You know, my parents gave up all their summer holidays,
00:39:55.840
all their spare cash for me to be able to do my sport.
00:39:59.700
Didn't get to travel around the world watching me
00:40:09.000
And because my dad spoke out about the East Germans,
00:40:12.900
even though he had the only female individual medalist
00:40:15.820
from the whole of the 1980 Olympics, which was me.
00:40:20.760
So even though we think that we understand the East German thing
00:40:25.280
and we go, of course they were cheating, why was it more done?
00:40:27.740
We knew at the time, and exactly the same happened to him
00:40:31.180
and is there a difference in mentality between the individual individualist sports like swimming
00:40:38.140
and people who play a team sport or is it kind of the same um good yeah i think it's slightly
00:40:45.040
different because my son plays rugby i've got a 16 year old's part of both academy and my eldest
00:40:49.260
played rugby at millfield and my daughter did track and field so they've all done sport that's
00:40:53.240
within the genes yeah um millfield's a very good sports school for people who yeah we used to play
00:40:59.680
against them and get slaughtered every time yeah he was on a little bit of a scholarship but it was
00:41:05.000
still a very expensive school um yeah i mean i think the mentality of a team sport is that there's
00:41:10.640
15 of you in rugby or 11 or whatever and so you know you're part of a like a cog in a machine and
00:41:16.780
all of it has got to work together and everyone's got their job whereas in an individual sport it's
00:41:21.060
just you and i must admit i always felt that i was an individual i didn't like being in a team i
00:41:26.040
didn't like feeling like i had to rely on somebody else being on their a game it was down to me and
00:41:30.520
if i wasn't on my a game it's my fault so so yeah i think there is a you know a certain mentality
00:41:35.740
to people that want to do it individually versus people that want to do it in the team but there's
00:41:39.240
still huge sacrifices and hard work involved the physical you know the fact that you weren't happy
00:41:44.600
to beat your body up to the nth degree i mean you know swimmers our injuries are shoulders because
00:41:49.820
we're rotating all the time but you know you look at foot i was talking to lee dixon earlier this
00:41:54.440
week because he's got a knee issue and i've had some knee issues and he was talking to me about
00:41:58.720
all the ops he's had you know from football acls all the time whatever uh steve backley had a hip
00:42:03.880
replacement at 39 because he was constantly twisting you know to throw a javelin so we
00:42:08.420
wreck our bodies bodies aren't designed to do six hours a day you know repetition no they're
00:42:14.060
absolutely not another thing that i wanted to ask is that a lot of athletes talk about this mindset
00:42:21.880
that when they cross the metaphorical white line
00:42:32.220
Did you have to, you know, you become more ruthless,
00:42:50.620
yeah so a bit of both because because ultimately there's got to be something in you that makes you
00:42:55.400
want to win regardless and that i think is genetic that is just who you are and then the other bit is
00:43:00.860
is all the ingredients in the cake there you know do you happen to be the right size to do the sport
00:43:05.660
that you want to do um do you have the right support structure do you have the coaching do
00:43:09.440
you have the access to the pool does your body not break down and enable you to do the training
00:43:13.460
that's required you know those are all the things that have to go into making this cake that's got
00:43:17.140
to be presented on the day and absolutely beautifully and so you go off and you win
00:43:20.440
the olympics or whatever so it's definitely a bit of both i mean if you said to me you know if i was
00:43:25.780
playing a game of cards did i care whether i win or lose i'll tell you i want to win you know that's
00:43:31.380
the way that i'm made just the same um michael jordan is famously like that like he cannot lose
00:43:37.120
anything yeah you know it's in your dna isn't it that you that's what's important to you you know
00:43:41.800
you want to win i think having a family as a woman definitely makes you a little bit softer
00:43:47.040
you know it you change your priorities a little bit and and or a big bit i mean i've my wife has
00:43:53.660
had a baby they just it was a big change it wasn't a little bit it's a change for my man dad isn't it
00:43:57.780
but i think mums in particular all of a sudden they just go down that pecking order until they
00:44:01.580
realize that they're at the bottom of the pecking order everybody including the dogs
00:44:04.300
talk to us about losing uh it sounds like a loaded question but it's not everybody loses in life
00:44:12.740
everybody experiences setback and sport in many ways is we talked about a little bit earlier is
00:44:19.300
the perfect place to know and learn how to lose well how to bounce back what what is your advice
00:44:27.780
what are your thoughts on people experiencing difficulties and setbacks in life how do you
00:44:32.260
bounce back from a setback i think it's that understanding of you get something positive
00:44:37.340
out of everything you do you know whether it's an experience or just learning it's not what you want
00:44:41.620
to do you know you think about lots of youngsters nowadays you know trying to pick their options or
00:44:46.180
pick what they want to go to university or pick what their first job is going to be you know
00:44:49.460
and I've always said to my lot just you go and do it go and do it if it doesn't work you can
00:44:54.400
change your mind you can change your mind go start again do something totally different but be brave
00:44:58.580
enough to go and do it so I think sport for me taught me to be brave it taught me to just try
00:45:03.260
things and if it doesn't work well I learned that I didn't want to do it that's a good lesson
00:45:07.880
and instead of being afraid to not try and what was it like to represent your country I imagine
00:45:15.140
that must have been such a thrill I was doing it at such a young age it sounds silly but I kind of
00:45:19.240
just grew up with it all you know I was a question I often get asked or it must have been incredibly
00:45:24.780
daunting being at the Olympics at 13 actually it's the opposite because when you're yeah so
00:45:29.300
when you're there as a youngster you're like wow this is cool and you're not oh my god the world's
00:45:34.440
watch me it doesn't occur to you what is in your back of your mind is well I'll be here in four
00:45:38.440
years time and I'll be really good whereas so I went up to my first limits I'm like this is
00:45:42.160
fabulous I'm getting to find out where the changing rooms are how this works what an Olympic village
00:45:46.180
is like what the food hall's like I never thought oh my god I'm like a rabbit in the headlights I
00:45:50.360
was just soaking it all up thinking I've got my future in front of me which is really positive
00:45:55.220
it gets really scary when you've spent 10 years training and you've got one race coming and you
00:46:00.260
know there's not another one you know that there's that one race on that one day and if you mess that
00:46:05.860
up there will never be another chance ever that's quite scary and that's the difference between an
00:46:12.540
elite athlete and someone who's got you know loads of talent is that ability to handle pressure
00:46:19.000
yeah i think so i think the mental strength to be able to put it into context you know and to
00:46:24.360
understand there is an olympics it is really special however it's not life and death you know
00:46:29.700
If something was to go drastically wrong, you will survive.
00:46:34.860
Sharon Davis, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you.
00:46:37.600
We're going to go to locals for our supporters' questions
00:46:41.620
But before we do, we always end with the same question with all our guests,
00:46:45.560
which is what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society
00:46:51.280
I think the misogyny thing is a real big problem at the moment.
00:46:56.800
and more men standing up for women, particularly in sport.
00:47:00.140
A lot of the time they've sat on the fence and stayed very quiet.
00:47:06.840
If people want to buy your book, if people want to find you online,
00:47:10.500
We're actually in high street shops as well, which is really lovely.
00:47:17.100
Well, thank you for being here for the interview.
00:47:18.520
Follow us over to Locals, where we're going to ask Sharon your questions.
00:47:21.480
Does Sharon think we should go back and strip the records
00:47:25.920
slash medals from past steroid users slash abusers
00:47:29.600
or should we just draw a line and move forward from here?