The International Olympic Comittee funded a study on trans "athletes".

The study doesn't amount to anything...

The mainstream press is having a field day with a new study examining athletic performance¹ of transgendered individuals relative to cisgendered individuals, leading to headlines such as some of the ones below:

This all comes after years of debate over the encroachment of trans people- especially trans women- into sports which were originally sex-specific and dominating said sports, leading to huge debates regarding whether trans people (trans women in particular) have an advantage in athletic competitions due to years of exposure to testosterone and the overall stronger and larger stature of males in general.

So of course any study that would affirm the belief that trans people may not have an advantage in sports will be applauded as justification for allowing trans women to compete with females.

Published in BMJ

Unfortunately, this study is rife with issues and hardly amounts to much of anything, much to the chagrin of trans activists in the media.

For one, the study in question recruited both trans and cis individuals through social media and put them through various physical activities and measured their performance:

Following ethical approval (ref: 9496), 75 (19 CM, 12 transgender men, 23 transgender women and 21 cisgender women) participants were recruited through social media advertising on Meta Platforms (Facebook and Instagram, Meta Platforms, California, USA) and X (Twitter, California, USA). Following the initial response, all participants were provided with the participant information sheet by email at least 7 days before being invited to travel to the laboratory, with further oral information about the study procedures and written informed consent provided on their visit to the laboratory.

There’s no indication as to how recruitment occurred which would raise questions regarding recruitment bias. That is, there’s a possibility that people who were recruited may have had some underlying reason to join the study. This is a smaller one of several issues, but an issue nonetheless.

Second, note that this study, sponsored by the International Olympic Committee- an event that takes the top athletes from across the world and have them compete against one another- included either people who were competitive athletes…or people who regularly exercised…:

Participants were required to participate in competitive sports or undergo physical training at least three times per week. Following written consent, participants were asked to record their last four training sessions and self-rate their training intensity for each session on a scale of 1–10 (10=maximum intensity). The mean of the four sessions was recorded to represent the athletes’ training intensity. The transgender athletes must have completed ≥1 year of GAHT, voluntarily disclosed during consent and verified during blood test analysis.

So how many participants were active in competitive sports, and how many just exercised/trained on occassion?

Again, there isn’t any information regarding what competitive sports the participants were active in, nor is there any information regarding what constitutes “physical training”. Are we expected to assume that these two inclusionary criteria are anywhere similar? I highly doubt someone who actively competes in weightlifting will be anywhere near the same as someone who recreationally engages in strength training. This is made even worse given that participants self-rated their own intensities, so who is to say that people may be fudging their own exercise intensity?

So right off the bat it’s obvious that a lot of ambiguity is being introduced into this study- we don’t know how these participants were recruited, we don’t know how many are active competitors in sports, or who are just recreationally active people.

Furthermore, note that characteristics of the participants are clearly different from one another. That is, females were generally younger than the other 3 cohorts. Even more strange is the fact that the trans women cohort is overall far bigger and with a greater BMI:

It’s hard to make direct comparisons between the groups because we would inherently argue that all 4 groups may be distinct from one another. However, the main problem here is the fact that the transgender women group is nearly 23 kg (nearly 50 lbs) heavier than the female group with a far greater BMI, and even weighing more than the male group. This also comes with the fact that the standard deviation for this group is nearly 20 kg in both directions which also suggests a large degree of variability in weight within this group alone.

This further complicates this study- if the recruitment criteria included people who competed in competitive sports or were physically active how can we explain the far higher weight and BMI of those within the transgender women group? What physical activities are they exactly engaging in where being larger/heavier doesn’t serve as a detriment to their sport? And would this suggest that the transgender women group is active in different sports and activities relative to the female group, and wouldn’t that suggest that we can’t compare these two groups? How fit are these participants in general?

And before we consider anything that requires higher muscle mass note that the transgender women group had a far higher body fat percentage, thus suggesting that most of the additional weight is fat and not muscle:

This further suggests that these groups may not be well-matched to one another, and again further emphasizes the point that any findings from this study comes with the fact that a bunch of confounders are occurring (again, how fit are these participants??)

This makes the findings not too compelling. The researchers used 3 tests in order to evaluate participant’s performances:

• a handgrip test- a straightforward test requiring participants squeeze a handgrip dynamometer and having their strength measured

• a lower body anaerobic test- essentially a counterforce test measured by way of having participants perform jump squats and examining the energy to push off the ground

• a cardiopulmonary test- another straightforward test similar to other tests measuring anaerobic threshold

When examining handgrip strength the authors noted that both males and transgender women had overall greater absolute grip strength, although this effect was decreased when fat-free mass was taken into account.

From Hamilton, et al. Figure 3. Grip strength (GS) as measured by a handgrip dynamometer.

In contrast, when the lower body anaerobic study was conducted the researchers noted that transgender women couldn’t jump as high, and although absolute power was higher among this group relative to females the transgender women group had a lower power relative to the female group:

Figure 4. Lower body power measured using countermovement jumps (i.e. the force needed to push off of the ground in a movement similar to a jump squat).

It’s interesting that, in both tests where transgender women seemed to outperform females, the effect disappears when body fat was removed. This makes it even more curious how much the differences in weight/body fat contribute to the results being seen, and again raises questions regarding the high degree of variability among the participants. This may at least explain why the jump height for the transgender women were the lowest in the group.

There’s something else regarding this portion of the study that should be taken into account. Note that participants were not asked to just perform a countermovement jump but were asked to cycle for 20 minutes as a warm-up (from the supplemental material; emphasis mine):

Lower body power will be measured with the counter-movement jump (CMJ) manoeuvre on a JUM001 Jump Mat (Probotics Inc, Alabama, USA). Before testing, the participants will be asked to cycle on a cycle ergometer (Monark Exercise AB, Vansbro, Sweden) for 20 minutes at 60 revolutions per minute to warm up the muscle groups of the legs. During this cycle, the participants will be shown the technique of the CMJ procedure by the first (BH) or second author (CC). The test will be controlled to ~45° of counter-movement and hands must be placed on hips to prevent arm swing.

I’d be curious how much this “warm-up” would influence one’s ability to jump. It may not amount to much of a warm-up, but remember that we still don’t know how fit these participants are, especially among those within the transgender women group given their higher body fat and BMI.

So overall it’s obvious that this study doesn’t do much to actually examine differences between transgender and cisgender individuals. We don’t even know the fitness level of these individuals, or what competitive sports, if any, they engage in. Note that the authors themselves point out that their study lacks generalizability and can’t even provide information regarding specific sports in particular:

Future research should include more extensive and diverse samples to enhance the generalisability of findings or smaller, more specific cohorts to hone in on a particular sports discipline. However, such studies may be complex due to the low numbers of transgender athletes.

Does grip strength really translate into athletic performance across all sports? And does the same account for lower body strength? I don’t think archers need to focus heavily on their lower body…

Overall, this is essentially a nothingburger of studies, and yet this hasn’t stopped people from acting as if this is a clear case that transgender women don’t have an upperhand in sports. In fact, people are trying to make such tenuous results out to suggest the opposite. Again, the information here is so lackluster that it doesn’t tell us much of anything, and it’s quite surprising that an institution that is in charge of the best athletes in the world could barely put together a study that measured actual athletic performance!

And this becomes the biggest problem with studies such as these. It doesn’t matter how heavily flawed the study is so long as it provides a narrative to work off of. It’s why the mainstream press are milking this study for more than it’s worth- because to be frank a study such as this is quite worthless. It only is garnering attention because it is being made out to be an example of science-based evidence rather than a heavily flawed, heavily biased study.

And it also doesn’t obfuscate the fact that we are seeing clear evidence of disparities in performance between transgender women and females. While activists continue to look for evidence that validates their assumptions transgendered individuals such as Lia Thomas are continuing to break women’s records in swimming, and outcompeting women by seconds in some meets.

And then there’s MMA fighter Fallon Fox who fractured a female opponent’s skull during a fight with her opponent commenting the following:

“I can only say, I’ve never felt so overpowered ever in my life and I am an abnormally strong female in my own right. Her [Fallon Fox] grip was different, I could usually move around in the clinch against other females but couldn’t move at all in Fox’s clinch”

You don’t need a double-blind RCT to understand how significant of a difference in strength there are between females and transgender women- the evidence can be seen in reality.

There’s clear evidence all around us that transgender women are outcompeting females in many arenas, and instead of addressing this clear imbalance activists are turning to THE SCIENCE as if it will provide them some rebuttal against reality.

It’s again another example of how those in the media suffer from egregious scientific illiteracy. They should do more to understand science, and focus less on ideology.

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1. Hamilton B, Brown A, Montagner-Moraes S, et al

Strength, power and aerobic capacity of transgender athletes: a cross-sectional study

British Journal of Sports Medicine Published Online First: 10 April 2024. doi: 10.1136/bjsports-2023-108029