Another female sports icon has been verbally attacked for saying that men identifying as women should not be allowed to compete in female sporting events.
Dame Kelly Holmes was branded ‘transphobic’ by a male cyclist called Rachel McKinnon who competes as a female.
McKinnon was recently accused of trying to bully Martina Navratilova over the tennis star’s view that men should not be able to compete as women.
A clear disadvantage
Double Olympic gold medal winner Dame Kelly supports campaign group Fair Play for Women who insist women are at a clear disadvantage against male competitors.
Expressing her support for Navratilova, the former athlete said it is: “Nothing to do with being Transphobic and nothing to do with hatred or stopping people leading their lives as they wish. But in sport it’s a different matter for obvious reasons.”
In response, McKinnon contacted Dame Kelly’s sponsors – Specialized and Garmin UK – asking them to ‘take a stand’ against the ‘transphobic’ athlete.
Specialized replied: “This is not representative of our brand values.”
‘Just ridiculous’
Holmes responded: “Calling me transphobic is just ridiculous – far from it. I have an opinion you don’t like… that’s that!”
She also publicly backed former Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies MBE for saying that “those with a male sex advantage should not be able to compete in women’s sport”.
Davies argues that allowing men to compete in women’s sport is simply a matter of biology.
She said: “Michael Phelps has got size 15 feet, your average female has size five or six feet, so if we were to move a man into swimming they would totally dominate all the women’s events.”