Transathlete phobia - is it really math phobia?

All those numbers on the backs of trans women athletes tell a story

The transmisia (or transphobia, if you insist) outrage machine has kicked into overdrive with the recent first-place victories of AB Hernandez. Despite Hernandez’ second in the long jump and eighth in the high jump prelims only three weeks previously, a school district president asserted her “biggest goal” for 2026 was to elect more members across the state to ban transgender athletes. “We’re asking for President Trump to pull the funding. We have to have the funding pulled so girls can win.”

In a district where roughly half the students test below proficient level for both reading and math, one might think school boards had other issues to worry about. I guess one would be wrong.

Why are the actual numbers so studiously ignored? Statistics are often impugned. On the other hand we have Lord Kelvin (of the eponymous temperature scale): “When you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.” Perhaps we can make our knowledge on this topic a bit less meagre.

Based on the frequency of press reports, the 100- and 200-meter sprint victories of Andraya Yearwood at Cromwell (Connecticut) High School in April, 2017, along with teammate Terry Miller, started a spirited competition for the most unreasonable objections to trans athletes. A set of cisgender complainants soon led that race with a lawsuit seeking to win what they could not on the field, even though one of them (Chelsea Mitchell) beat one of those unbeatable trans competitors immediately after the filing.

No doubt the doubters don't find it difficult to dismiss a single race. So let's do the numbers.

This figure summarizes the season results for the three competitors (CM = Mitchell; AY = Yearwood, and TM = Miller; times are in seconds). What stands out immediately is 1) the absence of a consistent trend, and 2) the large overlap for all three. For example, in 2019 Mitchell's times lie well behind Miller's for the 55 m event, while in 2020 they are mostly ahead, and in the 300 m event by a large margin. In 2019's 100 m race, Mitchell (the cisgender athlete, remember) has the fastest time and Miller the slowest, although the average for both is identical to within the accuracy of measurement (12.30 s). Yearwood led the 55 m field during 2020, but posted the next-slowest time in 2019. While she bested Mitchell's shortest 2020 55 m time twice, she was also far behind her slowest one, and achieved an average only 0.05 s below Mitchell.

Computing season-average times may strike the dedicated “eyes on the prize” sports fan as improper, but it is precisely the right approach for assessing relative strength. In the two examples shown below, one can see no correlation between any two successive races; i.e., any later one could be faster or slower than the preceding one, and by potentially widely different margins. An athlete might become a little stronger over the entire season, but not over a few weeks.

In only three of Chelsea Mitchell's fourteen events from 2017 through 2020 did she achieve her season best in the final race. On any given day, any time within that athlete's overall distribution may easily be the one that she posts. The season-average standard deviations for these races range from 1 to 5%, and even 2% can exceed the typical winning margin. For example, consider the 2019 100 m CIAC Combined Class S Championship. Miller took first with 11.93 s; Mitchell second with 12.02 s. The standard deviations for the season were 0.53 and 0.35 s respectively: far beyond the 0.09 s race difference.

The notion that trans girls are inherently stronger is not even a mirage.

Now, since the critics want us to believe that transgender girls are as strong as cisgender boys, let's look at those numbers (from the same website as the others).

The blue squares show the fastest as well as the slowest boy in each of four typical races, along with the prelim time that is just below the fastest girl. (In one race there were no prelims listed.)

To those who claim that trans girls are athletically boys, I suggest: do the numbers. Your knowledge will be less meagre.

This is only a sample of the total data for these three athletes. We can do the same for others, with the same conclusion. For example: Lia Thomas attracted controversy (and lawsuits) by winning first place in the 500 yard freestyle, 2022 NCAA Division I Women's Championship as well as three other first-place finishes in Ivy League championships leading up to it.

And yet she placed sixth in total points. She set no records, while three other swimmers set a total of seventeen (not counting nine others set in relays); and didn't place in the top three in any other event (while the three record-setters placed in the top three eight times; sixteen counting relays). Brooke Ford placed fourth behind Thomas, yet she placed second and first in other events (400 IM and 800 free relay respectively).

The bottom line is simple, and the evidence unambiguous: transgender women are statistically equivalent to cisgender women in athletic performance. Sometimes they win and sometimes they lose – on the same field. Excellent athletes all.

The End.

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