The Tour of the Gila is what’s known in cycling as a stage race, i.e. a race which takes place over several days. Each individual stage has a winner, 2nd place, 3rd place, etc. The person with the lowest combined time in all of the stages wins the overall race. Earlier this week a trans woman named Austin Killips won the 5th and final stage of the Tour of the Gila women’s cycling race and thereby clinched the win of the overall race. It was the first time a trans woman has won any women’s stage race.

Women’s GC results after Stage 5 of #TOTG2023:

🥇Austin Killips @AmyD_Foundation
🥈 @marce_prieto92 @patobike030773
🥉 Emily Ehrlich @TeamTWENTY24

🔴Climber’s jersey: Killips @AmyD_Foundation
💚Sprinter’s jersey: @ShaynaPowless @DNA_K4
⚪️Best Young Rider jersey: Nadia…

— Tour of the Gila (@TouroftheGila) April 30, 2023

As you can see, Killips also won the climber’s jersey (called the “Queen of the Mountains” jersey in this race) which is a competition within the overall race for those who score the most points on the climbs. To be fair, the overall winner in these type of races is often one of the top climbers so this isn’t unheard of but it’s a sign this was a fairly dominant performance. Killips apparently only started racing in 2019.

Austin Killips @AmyD_Foundation put an exclamation point on her overall race lead Sunday by winning Stage 5 Gila Monster and taking home the overall victory at Tour of the Gila. #UCIWomen #TOTG2023https://t.co/exLh7kIIJI

— Tour of the Gila (@TouroftheGila) May 1, 2023

Both of these tweets about the win limited responses, making it obvious the race organizers were worried about a backlash. Tour of the Gila also tweeted out video interviews with Marcela Prieto the Mexican cyclist who came in second overall. As far as I can tell, they did not tweet out an interview with Killips, the race winner.

This isn’t the first time Killips has stirred up controversy in the sport. Last month former champion racer Hannah Arensman quit the sport over having to compete with men including Killips.

“I have decided to end my cycling career,” Arensman said last Wednesday.

She said in her last race, in the elite women’s division of the UCI Cyclocross National Championships in late December, she “came in 4th place, flanked on either side by male riders awarded 3rd and 5th places.”

“My sister and family sobbed as they watched a man finish in front of me, having witnessed several physical interactions with him throughout the race,” she wrote, in a statement also shared by the Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS).

“Additionally, it is difficult for me to think about the very real possibility I was overlooked for an international selection on the US team at Cyclocross Worlds in February 2023 because of a male competitor.”

She said that it “has become increasingly discouraging to train as hard as I do only to have to lose to a man with the unfair advantage of an androgenized body that intrinsically gives him an obvious advantage over me, no matter how hard I train.”

Decisions about who can compete aren’t up to the individual race organizers. Races of this type are governed by a world body called the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) which sets the rules for all sanctioned races including the rules allowing trans women to compete in women’s events. So after the race there were complaints that UCI needed to do something about the rules. Former tennis champ Martina Navratilova was one of the people who complained.

Transgender cyclist Austin Killips wins women's race, causes outrage- this will happen more and more- women’s sports is NOT THE PLACE for trans identified male athletes https://t.co/1KDuhYqyoh

— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) May 3, 2023

She wasn’t alone:

Former world champion cyclist Alison Sydor tweeted: “The current UCI rules that allow males to compete in female cycling events are not fair to female athletes.

“Time for UCI to admit this current rule situation is unsustainable and leaving a black mark on cycling as a fair sport for females.”

Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies — who last month called for a boycott of Nike over the apparel giant’s decision to use transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney to promote its sportswear for women — also hit out at Killips’ inclusion in the category.

“This is beyond disappointing,” Davies told The Daily Mail.

UCI’s initial response to the complaints was to defend its current rules while leaving open the possibility that the rules could change in the future.

In a statement on Tuesday the UCI said: “The UCI acknowledges that transgender athletes may wish to compete in accordance with their gender identity.

“The UCI rules are based on the latest scientific knowledge and have been applied in a consistent manner. The UCI continues to follow the evolution of scientific findings and may change its rules in the future as scientific knowledge evolves.”

Just two days later is appears they’ve had a change of heart and will take a second look at the current rules.

In a statement the body said on Thursday “participation of transgender athletes in international competitions was discussed” at a UCI management committee meeting.

“The management committee decided to analyse the current situation by reopening consultation with the athletes and national federations, and therefore agreed to debate and take an eventual decision at its next meeting, in Glasgow, in August.”

The Telegraph reported that many women are angry about having to compete with trans women but they are also afraid to speak up.

Maria Blower, who represented Great Britain when women’s cyclists were first permitted in the Olympic Games in 1984, says competitors as well as administrators have been unable to agree on the sport’s best course of action because the mood is so toxic.

“There is disagreement within the UCI,” she said. “We know that some are on our side and some are clearly not. I know a lot of girls who are currently racing who are frightened. They don’t want to be bullied or to be seen as bigots. That’s why they smile on the podium. Everybody’s confused – we’re all angry but, while we’re sitting on our hands desperately worrying, nothing is being done.”

I guess we’ll see what UCI decides to do in three months. The current situation is clearly unfair to women cyclists but, as we’ve seen before, Killips seems incapable of understanding why. In an interview with Cycling News, Killips said this:

“I don’t necessarily know how to navigate this conversation. Right now, at this moment in time, it feels that trans people, in general, are a culture-war lightning rod,” Killips told Cyclingnews while on her drive home directly following the Tour of the Gila on Monday…

Killips said she didn’t feel that there was any way to have a discussion with people who are part of this anti-trans movement.

“In some ways, things are worse than they were 10 years ago, we are a real political target for a scary political movement. It’s a unique moment in history where there is a category of people that are being very specifically targeted in a unique way. That’s not where the right-wing social conservative conversation was 10 years ago, they just didn’t shine a spotlight on us as the thing to hyper-fixate on. They are working toward an end, with an outcome in mind and a vision of the world, I don’t think they are budgeing, they are engaged in a power struggle and willing to have blood on their hands and casualties from the fear and hate-mongering that they churn up.”

To Killips there are the righteous trans women on one side and the evil conservatives on the other. There’s no room for discussion about the women who feel their effort and training has been undermined by an unfair competition.