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A women's cycling champion has quit the sport just days after yet another biological male won a women's event - this time in New York.
Champion cyclocross rider Hannah Arensman also filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court about her retirement.
"I have decided to end my cycling career. At my last race at the recent UCI Cyclocross National Championships in the elite women’s category in December 2022, I came in 4th place, flanked on either side by male riders awarded 3rd and 5th places. My sister and family sobbed as they watched a man finish in front of me, having witnessed several physical interactions with him throughout the race," said the racer who has notched up 30 career victories.
In the court filing she said that it “has become increasingly discouraging to train as hard as I do only to have to lose to a man with the unfair advantage of an androgenized body that intrinsically gives him an obvious advantage over me, no matter how hard I train.”
“I feel for young girls learning to compete and who are growing up in a day when they no longer have a fair chance at being the new record holders and champions in cycling,” she wrote.
“I have felt deeply angered, disappointed, overlooked, and humiliated that the rule makers of women’s sports do not feel it is necessary to protect women’s sports to ensure fair competition for women anymore,” she wrote.
She also thinks that maybe she should have been on the US team earlier this year.
"Additionally, it is difficult for me to think about the very real possibility I was overlooked for an international selection on the US team at Cyclocross Worlds in February 2023 because of a male competitor."
Is this what it's going to take? Women quitting their sports in enough numbers to make the world notice having to compete against biological males is simply not fair?
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