Top woman tennis player would be 5000th among men players!!! track math says so!!!

One anecdotal story in one sport, settles the transgender issue in every sport at all levels?

Do you see this 2nd transgender player as being a fake or the real deal?

No, but to those who pay attention to the sport, the 2016 Olympics Women’s 800 should wake you up to the possibilities. You have 3 people who have a genetic variation of 1/2000 births who end up on the podium in the olympics. Want to know the odds of that occurring randomly?

Either one shouldn't be allowed.

But people with testes that are producing normal amounts of male testosterone (as in the 2016 Olympics 800m) is not exactly the same situation as a transgender person who has been taking testosterone reducing medicine for several years.

I've read it as well, in hundreds of random comments on the internet. It is unfortunately not true.

It's not uncommon for "serious journalists" (sports or otherwise) to write things that aren't true. They read it somewhere, and use what they read as the source, without checking if that source is accurate.

Long distance swimming women actually do reasonably well against men, because women's extra fat helps them to be more buoyant than a man. But women aren't actually better than men in long distance swimming.

I don't subscribe to your misguided stance on this alleged huge societal disconnect in a rift between fantasy and reality, and moreso I don't think McEnroe's improvised response estimating Serena being the 700th ranked male vs whatever she'd actually be as evidence of this supposed cultural shortcoming either. Nor am I swayed arguments about healt-lauded "poisonous artificially colored sugar water being sold to kids". So really, I find a lot of irony in your argument when I don't see you grounded in reality yourself.

What’s your point? Water is wet. Go write a paper about it.

I agree with your overall position, but think you're mischaracterizing Richards' tennis career a bit.

As Richard Raskin, Richards in the 1950s was a star HS athlete and BMOC at the prestigious male-only Horace Mann School in the Bronx, excelling on the tennis, swim, football and baseball teams. Richards excelled in football as a wide receiver and as an ace pitcher in baseball. Richards' baseball skills were so exceptional that the youngster was offered a position with the New York Yankees. But as someone who was academically gifted, and whose father was a professor at Columbia, Richards wanted a higher education and so went as an undergrad to Yale, which at the time only admitted men as undergraduates. At Yale, Richards was captain of the (men's) tennis team, and was considered by many to be one of the best men's college tennis players in the country.

After graduating from Yale, Richards went to the University of Rochester Medical Center, specializing in ophthalmology and graduating with an MD 1959. After a two-year internship and another two years of residency at hospitals in New York, Richards joined the United States Navy to continue medical training and to play (men's) tennis for the Navy, going on to win in both singles and doubles at the All Navy Championship.

After the Navy, Richards took a break from medicine for a few years to play competitive tennis for a while. When Richards married model Barbara Mole in June 1970, Richards was ranked sixth amongst American male tennis players over 35. (Mole and Richards had a son Nicholas in 1972. The couple divorced in 1975, the same year Richards had what at the time was called "male to female sex change surgery" and switched names from Richard Raskin to Renee Clark.)

Also, Richards didn't switch to playing women's tennis as seamlessly as you make it seem. In 1976, Richards played women's tennis in California in regional competitions for the John Wayne Tennis Club under the name Renee Clark. That summer, Richards as Clark entered the La Jolla Tennis Tournament Championships, crushing the competition. Due to Richards' distinctive left-hand serve - remarkably powerful for a woman - Richards-Clark was recognized by Bob Perry, a tour player who remembered Richard Raskin from the men's tennis circuit and joined the dots. The word began to spread.

Also in the summer of 1976, Richards was invited by a longtime male friend to play in the women's category at a professional tennis tournament in NJ called Tennis Week Open that the friend was in charge of. In protest, 25 of the 32 women competing withdrew; and the US Tennis Association and Women's Tennis Association also revoked their sanctions for the event, and organized another tournament.

In the summer of 1976, Richards also applied to play in the women's category at the United States Open, Wimbledon and the Italian Open and was denied because Richards refused to take the Barr body test that all competitors in the female division were required to take in order to verify their sex. Richards responded by suing the USTA, which runs the US Open, in New York state court on the grounds that the USTA was in violation of NY laws prohibiting sex discrimination and protecting human rights - which were relevant because the US Open is played in NY. Richards argued that the USTA was committing unlawful sex discrimination and human rights violations by refusing to recognize Richards' "right to be a woman." There was considerable controversy at the time.

In 1977, the NY state judge hearing the case found in Richards's favor. He ruled: "This person is now a female" and said that requiring Richards to take a Barr body test to establish that Richards has female sex chromosomes was "grossly unfair, discriminatory and inequitable, and a violation of her rights." He further ruled that the USTA intentionally discriminated against Richards, and granted Richards an injunction against the USTA and the US Open Committee, forcing them to allow Richards to play in the 1977 US Open.

At the 1977 US Open, Richards - by now 44 - lost to in the first round of the singles competition to British player Virginia Wade, who at age 32 was a dozen years younger. However, Richards made it to the finals in women's doubles in 1977. Richards retired from women's professional tennis in 1981.

Given that as a high school baseball pitcher, Richards had an impressive enough arm to be scouted and offered a position with the NY Yankees, I think Richards is correct in now saying that female pro tennis players wouldn't have stood a chance if Richards had decided to take up women's tennis in Richards' late teens- early 20s rather than waiting until Richards was already well into middle age.

It doesn't make sense to selectively exclude some women's times on drug use assumptions but not to do the same for men. Taking both men's and women's lists as they are is the best way to compare (if they exist to the necessary depth). Unless you have good reason to argue and then estimate that a significantly higher proportion of top women's times are PED fueled to than the top men's times from 1st down to the top female time. While this is almost certainly true, we don't really have any way of quantifying it.

Genzebe Dibaba would have nearly WON the 2016 olympic 1500 men's GOLD MEDAL!

It was just meant to be more fair to high school runners and younger runners... World record really isn't a fair way to do it anyway... Just look at what the top professional women are running on any given year and compare that time to what high school college and professional men are doing...

I think a fair time would be like 4:18 which would be what a woman might actually run in a championship race without pacers... How many men in the world can break 4 18 in a mile... I'm guessing 10s of thousand s

Probably 1 million! At least a million have the potential to do it with a little bit of training!!!

I say 10 million!!!

I'm not sure what you mean by this question. "Real deal"? "Fake"? Meaning what? I imagine such a player genuinely identifies as female. My position is that I don't think biological males (trans gender and DSD) should be competing in women's sport - and certainly not at the elite level. The observation I was making is that it wouldn't take a particularly good male player to beat the best women because of the biological advantages a male has. If Renee Richards had transitioned a decade earlier than she did she probably would have been the best in the world in the women's category - as she now acknowledges. I don't think that is fair for women.

Faith Kipyegon ran 3:51.07 for 1500m last year. That would have ranked #2209 among men. There were far fewer men (under 500) who ran the mile faster than Sifan Hassan (4:14.74) because mile is not raced as frequently as 1500m.

No disrespect to Dibaba, but she missed the qualifying standard by 15 seconds.

What are you doing with the English language. You do now the word you are grasping for is taboo?

He doesn't appear to "now" that.