People Speak Out After Trans Person Won Women's Croquet Event In August

A trans athlete has, predictably, won yet another women's sports competition.

Jamie Gumbrell, a 23-year-old from Australia, identified as a man up until just a few years ago, before entering the Women's Golf Croquet Championship as a trans competitor. And according to The Telegraph, female competitors had no idea they'd be competing against a male athlete until they arrived for the tournament in England in August 2023.

Sure enough, Gumbrell won the world championship in women's croquet in dominant fashion.

"There was a huge amount of disquiet," according to England team member Sue Lightbody. "But nobody was prepared to say or do anything. I was quite sick about the situation."

And unsurprisingly, Lightbody revealed that those involved were worried about facing backlash for speaking out against Gumbrell's participation.

"We thought it would go against us, that we wouldn’t be picked for another team. Everything was hush-hush, everyone was worried about being called transphobic. People told me not to get involved, saying, ‘Don’t do anything, you’ll make yourself very unpopular’. But this just shouldn’t happen. It fundamentally isn’t fair."

Sounds exactly like the pressure faced by Riley Gaines and other female athletes over the inclusion of males in women's sports.

ATLANTA, GA - MARCH 18: University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas and Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines react after finishing tied for 5th in the 200 Freestyle finals at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships on March 18th, 2022 at the McAuley Aquatic Center in Atlanta Georgia. (Photo by Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Women Speaking Up Against Trans Athlete Domination Is The Only Way Forward

Another anonymous female athlete reportedly told The Telegraph that she "felt sorry" for the second place finisher, who was "crying" behind her glasses.

"We never thought we would have this problem," the woman said. "I really felt sorry in the final for Rachel, who at the end was hiding behind her sunglasses because she was crying. She didn’t complain. She had been training so hard to be the women’s world champion, and then someone born male comes and takes it away."

It might seem odd for there to be physical advantages for a male in a sport like croquet, but apparently there's a key technique that can only be accomplished by biological males.

"A key shot in golf croquet is the jump shot," one women's croquet player said. "If you’re on the boundary, you can jump over a couple of balls and get through a hoop. I can only do mid-jumps, I can’t do one from the baseline. But Jamie can. That is a huge advantage over a woman."

And this is exactly the problem with allowing self-identification to reign supreme over women's sports. There's simply too many physical advantages to being born male, and it can lead to dangerous consequences or lost opportunities for females. Denying biological reality has become a key tenant of progressive, "follow the science" ideology, despite the inherent hypocrisy. And all too often, women are caught in the crossfire.

The only way this changes is if more of them follow the lead of Gaines or Paula Scanlan and speak out about the unfair disadvantages they face. Maybe once every single women's sports record is held by a male, we'll finally get a permanent reckoning about this absurd practice.