Trans Activists Target Olympic Cyclist Inga Thompson For Saying Women Shouldn’t Have To Compete With Biological Men

The perpetually outraged trans activist community has latched onto a new target: former Olympian Inga Thompson.

Thompson competed in numerous Olympic games and other cycling events through the 1980’s and 90’s. She now has her own non profit to help women in sports and, up until the other day, served on the Oregon Bicycle Racing Association board of directors. Her crime against humanity? She has dared to come out and criticize male-to-female transgenders who are competing against women.

Her comments were from a Save Womens Sports article:

Inga Thompson of the Inga Thompson Foundation, a three-time Olympic cyclist, is gathering support from athletes to push the IOC to change its policy. We spoke with Inga about her efforts to preserve women’s sports. Inga said, “I feel that the International Olympic Committee and USOC will do nothing until there are no more biological women on the podium. I wholeheartedly and without reservation support transgender women competing in sports, in their own category.”

And that was it.

Soon after, the transgender community threw their tantrum. While Thompson may have competed in the Olympics for cycling, the oppression Olympics is new territory for her.

Bike Portland reports:

The Oregon Bicycle Racing Association (OBRA) has decided that one of their board members accused of “pervasive transphobia” can remain on their board of directors.

At-large OBRA board member and three-time Olympic cyclist Inga Thompson has come under scrutiny from some OBRA members who feel her conduct discriminates against transgender athletes. Thompson works closely with a group named Save Women’s Sports and was featured in an article published on their site in October titled, Male athletes are taking over women’s cycling.

In October Thompson represented Save Women’s Sports at a rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington D.C.. The rally aimed to “preserve women’s rights” and prevent the Supreme Court from including “gender identity” in the legal definition of “sex”. If that happened, the group worried that, “Any male could self-identify as a female and compete against women at every level of athletics, which would effectively destroy women’s sports.”

Thompson is also working to prevent transgender females from competing in the elite women’s category. In a letter she sent to the International Olympic Committee (IOC, who recently delayed new transgender guidelines), Thompson thinks the solution is a separate category. “It’s unfair for Transgender XY Women to compete against XX Women in sports,” she wrote, “Many more XY Women would compete if they knew it would be a fair playing field.”

Last month, Portland bike shop owner Rachel Cameron accused Thompson of “pervasive transphobia” and launched a petition (which has 478 signatures so far) to have her removed from the OBRA board.

In a phone interview from her eastern Oregon cattle ranch last night, Thompson said she aims to be more inclusive of transgender athletes, not less. “My feeling is that asking a transgender to take hormone suppressing drugs just to compete is not right. Why can’t they identify as a woman and still race?” Thompson was referring to current International Olympic Committee and OBRA elite competition transgender guidelines that allow people who’ve transitioned from male to female to compete in the women’s category; but only if they have a minimum level of testosterone in their blood of 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months prior to their first competition (and remain at or below that level).

But that’s not good enough.  The crybullies continued to press and press ORBA while slandering Thompson. Go read what they are saying about her on that petition. Meanwhile, Thompson’s twitter page has basically devolved into transgender athlete talk.

Save Women’s Sports did a follow up article addressing this dispute:

Articles have been published claiming Inga was transphobic for working with Save Women’s Sports. These articles also falsely claim that Inga wrote the article on our site titled “Males are Taking Over Women’s Cycling.” In a Facebook post, Veronica Ivy “Her Thighness” McKinnon (previously known as Rachel McKinnon and Rhys McKinnon), cyclist and self-proclaimed expert on transgender inclusion, said “OBRA is a trash organization. Burn it down. It’s run by transphobes.”

Cyclist Mary Verrandeaux told Save Women’s Sports, “Inga is one of the most decorated women American cyclists. I’m glad they backed her up. But at the same time—this is a travesty to women’s sports. Although I STRONGLY believe everyone has their right to live as they wish, biology is a basic truth. Biological men should not ever be allowed to race as a woman.”

While Save Women’s Sports has worked with Inga, this does not mean that we agree with everything she or her organization, The Inga Thompson Foundation, does and, in turn, she probably doesn’t agree with everything we say and do here at Save Women’s Sports. But we can come together to say that biological males who “identify” as women should not be allowed to compete against women.

We don’t have to agree on everything to achieve this one important thing: Together we can save women’s sports.

Thompson eventually resigned from her position on the ORBA board, as Willamette Week reports:

Former Olympic cyclist Inga Thompson today resigned from the Oregon Bicycle Racing Association board of directors.

A petition for Thompson to be removed from the board was circulated in October, after Thompson proposed that a separate racing category be created for transgender bicycle racing entrants. Thompson was interviewed in an article on a website called Save Women’s Sports, in which authors wrote, “This is the beginning of the end for women’s sports. We cannot allow this abuse of female athletes and mockery of women’s sports to continue. It is not bigotry to defend biology, and it is not hate speech to defend your rights.”

The petition for Thompson’s removal, which was circulated by Portland bicycle repair shop owner Rachel Cameron, received nearly 500 signatures. On Dec. 9, OBRA responded with an announcement that it would not be removing Thompson from the board.

But today, just three days later, OBRA’s executive director Chuck Kenlan announced that Thompson had resigned from the board.

“OBRA thanks Inga for her service and wishes her well in all her future endeavors,” the statement read. “I pledge to you, our passionate membership, that OBRA will continue to strive towards fulfilling our mission of inclusiveness in the sport of bicycle racing and adhere to our statement of diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Thompson tells WW she was asked to resign from the board because of an interview she gave to BikePortland, in which she said the board’s decision to keep her on “validates her proposal” to create a separate category for transgender cyclists.

In a Dec. 11 email to Thompson obtained by WW, Kenlan wrote that due to statements made to BikePortland and on Twitter—Thompson tweeted “So excited that the board unanimously voted to keep me on the board and see the value of more inclusion of transgender women”—the board determined that Thompson “violated the confidentiality of the executive session.”

Kenlan said the board voted to remove Thompson.

What a sad ending for such a decorated athlete.

 

Thanks for sharing!