This week coming up in Atlanta, the NCAA Women’s Division I Swimming and Diving Championships, begin on March 16. One of the top-seated competitors is Lia Thomas from the University of Pennsylvania Women’s Team. The 22-year-old senior is no ordinary athlete as she is a Trans female at the center of a rancorous national debate over Trans athletes in competition sports.

Earlier this month Thomas was profiled in a cover story for Sports Illustrated magazine in an exclusive interview explaining why she has to compete when many—including some teammates—say she shouldn’t be able to compete against other women. “The very simple answer is that I am not a man,’ Thomas told SI. “I’m a woman — so I belong on the women’s team.”

Her answer rankled opponents of Trans girls and females participating in sports including reality-television star, a pre-transition Olympian, and conservative Trump Republican Caitlyn Jenner. In a March 4 2022 by Barbara McMahon, UK journalist based in Los Angeles for the British tabloid The Daily Mail, Jenner tells her; “I don’t think biological boys should compete in women’s sports — we have to protect women’s sports. That’s the bottom line.”

“I respect her right to transition and I hope she has a wonderful, wonderful life. But she grew up as a biological boy and I don’t think it’s fair that she’s competing in women’s sports,'” Jenner tells The Daily Mail. “Her cardiovascular system is bigger, her heart is bigger, she’s got longer arms and legs.”

“Three years earlier, she was on the men’s team ranked 462; now she’s No. 1 in the same event for women? Obviously, it’s not fair,” Jenner comments.

Thomas is adhering to the standards and regulations set out by the U.S. National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which requires Trans female athletes to be on hormone therapy for at least 12 months before they can compete.

The NCAA adopted new policies in January covering the competition of transgender athletes, creating a “sport-by-sport” approach that also requires documentation of testosterone levels across the board amid a fervor of recently transitioned swimmers breaking records in women’s athletics.

Although the policy defers to the national governing bodies for individual sports, it also requires transgender athletes to document sport-specific testosterone levels beginning four weeks before their sport’s championship selections. The new policy, which consistent with rules for the U.S. Olympics, is effective 2022, although implementation is set to begin with the 2023-24 academic year, the organization says.

The NCAA guidelines now specify that Trans athletes would need to register continuously on HRT for 36 months before applying to swim as a woman. Thomas has been on HRT for a total of 34 months, however she is covered as the new policies have not yet been implemented.

Although critics charge that the NCAA policies doesn’t go far enough in protecting women’s sport and essentially make an exception for Thomas, Jenner agreed that the collegiate swimmer is following the rules. “But the rules have to change,” Jenner claims.

‘Here’s an example: I play golf and, seven years after my transition, I still have a big advantage over women players. I’m 6ft 1in. I have longer arms than the ladies and I can outdrive them by a hundred yards,’ she explains. ‘Even being off testosterone and on oestrogen for seven years now, what I’ve got left over is still more than they’ve ever had. So, it wouldn’t be fair.’

Jenner told the Daily Mail she was regularly invited to take part in ladies’ golf tournaments, but she always turned them down. “I’d feel bad taking a trophy away from one of the ladies at our club who really deserves it,” she said.

Jenner says she fully supports Thomas embracing her gender identity and living as a woman, but she says she does not understand her motives in sport.

“I don’t see how you can be happy beating other girls under these circumstances. You have to have a sense of personal responsibility. You can still enjoy sports but not play at a competitive level, right?”

In January Jenner also attacked Thomas:

We must protect women’s sports. We cannot bow down to the radical left wing woke world and the radical politically charged agenda of identity politics. pic.twitter.com/LBRx3w8hrQ

— Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) January 28, 2022

Jenner continues to draw a firestorm of criticism for her viewpoints regarding Trans girls and women in sports.

Last Spring, while running as a conservative Republican candidate for the Office of Governor in the special recall election of incumbent Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, Jenner was asked by a reporter from celebrity news tabloid TMZ about her position on the multiple pieces of anti-Trans youth sports legislation across the United States, outside a coffee shop in her hometown of Malibu.

Jenner responded that she saw it as a question of fairness saying that she opposed biological boys who are Trans- competing in girls’ sports in school. “It just isn’t fair,” Jenner said adding, “and we have to protect girls’ sports in our school.”

This past February Jenner attacked those members of the Trans community battling for greater inclusion of Trans girls and females in sports as “a fringe minority” accusing them of endangering children with transgender policies.

‘RUINING IT FOR EVERYBODY’: @Caitlyn_Jenner blasts ‘fringe’ members of LGBTQ community, accusing them of endangering children with transgender policies. pic.twitter.com/EUrhkaftt2

— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 23, 2022