A two-time Olympian has slammed the regulations that permitted a transgender runner to win the female category of the London Marathon by beating over 14,000 women.
Mara Yamauchi, who placed sixth in the marathon at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, reacted angrily after trans racer Glenique Frank, 54, boasted to the BBC about utilising “girl power” to win the crucial UK race on Sunday.
“Males in the [female] category is UNFAIR for females,” Yamauchi tweeted alongside a clip of the mid-race interview by the sports bra-wearing runner who also gushed about soon becoming “a gran.”
“Nearly 14,000 actual females suffered a worse finish position [because] of” Frank, wrote Yamauchi — who said that even when she was “ranked second in the world” as a woman, “at least 1300 men ran faster than me.”
She emphasised how, at the end of March, UK Athletics followed World Athletics’ regulations regarding the exclusion of transgender women from elite female events to make it “fair for athletes who have gone through male puberty to be excluded from the female category in athletics.”
It did, however, allow people who had already registered races to compete in categories that did not correspond to their biological sex.
“This male competed under UK Athletics’ transitional arrangements, but it is still wrong and unfair,” Yamauchi said to Telegraph Sport.
“Zero categories that exclude male performance advantage. Goddess forbid that female runners should have their own category celebrating what women runners can do,” she tweeted.
Frank told The Washington Post on Tuesday that she has previously participated in the male category in marathons, including one in New York in November, since she was required to join under the name and gender stated on her passport.
Despite this, she raced about New York with a bright red bra and a long pink wig as a tourist.
For the London Marathon, however, the same passport rules did not apply because Frank is UK-based and a British citizen.
“I ticked female because I see myself as female,” said Frank, who came out three years ago as Glenique — a mix of Glen and “unique” — but has “known since I was five that I was in the wrong body.”
Frank said it was “traumatic” to be publicly attacked while “trying to spread joy and happiness with the rainbow love” at the race.
Still, “I get it,” Frank, a personal trainer, said of the criticism. “I feel sad that I’ve upset Mara, because I respect her.”
Frank went viral after stopping to tell the BBC of her joy at running her 17th marathon.
“Girl power!” Frank said, while flexing her bulging biceps above rainbow-colored armbands.
The runner — whose social media still shows photos from earlier races while still a balding then-married man — ended the mid-race chat to gush about how her “beautiful son” is expecting a baby.
“So I’m going to be a gran — Granny G!” Frank said before running off, draped in a blue, pink and white transgender flag.
Frank expressed surprise at the backlash, considering that she was not an elite runner seeking for prize money or a podium spot.
Instead, she’s raised $37,000 for charity via the races.
“I did [the race in] four hours 11 minutes. There’s lots of women that beat me,” she noted of the more than 6,150 ahead of her in the category.
Still, from now on Frank said she is “going to enter under ‘other’ or ‘male,’ just to keep everybody happy.
“And I’ll still do it in four hours and I won’t steal anybody’s money,” she quipped.