The master's events are classified by both age and sex. A 55 year-old female doesn't compete against a 38 year-old male. However, a controversy erupted when Dr. Rachel McKinnon won the masters world championship in the match sprint in the women's 35-44-year-old age category. McKinnon was born a man.
Some background on competitive cycling. For years many riders at all levels of the sport complained that some of their rivals used performance-enhancing drugs to an unfair and illegal advantage. Governing bodies in cycling developed testing programs, including out of competition random tests, to insure that riders were following the rules. Offenders were suspended from competition and banished entirely, including American superstar and multiple Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong. Track cycling Olympian Tammy Thomas was banned from the sport for life.
The case against Armstrong rested almost entirely on the testimony of people that claimed to have a first-hand knowledge of drug abuse in cycling. Yet, these same people had continued to compete against Armstrong and others. Considering that, even by their own standards, it was unlikely that they could defeat a competitor with a pharmaceutical advantage, these riders were only serving as validation of a corrupt enterprise. It would have shown real courage and integrity to have refused to compete against others that they claimed to have known were cheating. They could, in fact, have formed their own sanctioning organizations to assure drug-free competition. But they didn't.
Moving on to Rachel McKinnon's world championship some interesting factors in that victory can be contemplated. The most obvious, of course, is the matter of McKinnon's sex in terms of athletic competition, not as a component of the individual's self-image or psychology. While McKinnon might get up every morning thinking as a female, physically, in the competitive cycling arena, McKinnon is a male. The idea that a certain level of blood testosterone determines sex, as advanced by the IOC and McKinnon in this Velo News article, is absurd scientism. Another interesting article on the subject is here.
Tall, burly female impersonator Rachel McKinnon
The argument is made that not allowing McKinnon to compete with women would be a denial of the right to fair competition at all is similarly absurd. Over 50% of the world's population is female. The idea that they should be required to accept an astonishingly small group of non-females as competitive equals is preposterous. As is the Olympic committee's UN-like statement that everyone has a right to compete, which has no bearing on the issue.
Ultimately, the most serious problem is the abrogation of that Olympian right in the case of women themselves. No conscious feminist could possibly accept that an altered, or even unaltered, male be allowed to contest in an athletic event for females. Males with sexual identity problems could easily push genuine females out of their own sports after years of efforts to promote them. In horse racing, for instance, gelded males compete against other males, not in races carded for fillies and mares. Nobody seems to know how the geldings feel about the whole thing.
Sarah Fader, actual female cyclist
So we finally get to Sarah Fader. She was the defending world champion in the class that McKinnon eventually won. In her clear-eyed response given in the Velo News article above she explains why she refused to compete. Her ideas have more validity than those of McKinnon. It seems odd that there has been so little agreement with them, which is a dramatic step backward for all women. Sarah Fader for Sportswoman of the Year.
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