Sports
Transgender swimmer breaks silence
Lia Thomas hopes to ‘swim at Olympic trials’
After months of nasty headlines and boos hurled her way at the mere mention of her name, Lia Thomas can finally live her life away from the spotlight, and enjoy her first summer as just another college graduate.
So, what does the out transgender champion do? She’s granted her first media interviews since her historic NCAA victory, telling reporters she’s headed to law school and she also plans to take the laps necessary to win Olympic gold.
“I intend to keep swimming,” Thomas told ABC News correspondent Juju Chang Tuesday on “Good Morning America.” “It’s been a goal of mine to swim at Olympic trials for a very long time, and I would love to see that through.”
In addition to Chang, the native of Austin, Texas, also agreed to answer questions from ESPN sportswriter Katie Barnes, who is the first out LGBTQ journalist to be granted this opportunity.
The Los Angeles Blade repeatedly requested an interview with Thomas, before, during and after she competed at the National Championships in Atlanta. Barnes was there, too, and as they reported, Thomas flat-out refused to appear at the traditional winner’s news conference. She gave only two interviews during her historic run: The first went to a SwimSwam podcaster in December, and the only other one was live on the pool deck with ESPN, immediately after Thomas won the 500-freestyle in March.
Barnes, who is non-binary, asked the UPenn grad for her perspective on the ongoing national debate over trans girls and women competing with cisgender girls and women in school sports.
“The biggest misconception, I think, is the reason I transitioned,” Thomas said. “People will say, ‘Oh, she just transitioned so she would have an advantage, so she could win.’ I transitioned to be happy, to be true to myself.”
Thomas, who swam on the Penn men’s swimming team for three seasons, then took a gap year during the COVID-19 pandemic, which canceled college swimming, said she began her medical transition in May 2019 following her sophomore year. By the time she joined the women’s swim team as a fifth year senior in 2021, she had undergone 30months of hormone replacement therapy.
Republican legislators who have copy-pasted bills banning trans student athletes across the country have invoked Thomas’ name, claiming laws were needed to protect the sanctity of women’s sports, even in states where no out trans students competed.
Thomas told ESPN the threat is entirely imaginary.
“Trans women competing in women’s sports does not threaten women’s sports as a whole,” Thomas told Barnes. “Trans women are a very small minority of all athletes. The NCAA rules regarding trans women competing in women’s sports have been around for 10-plus years. And we haven’t seen any massive wave of trans women dominating.”
The rules are changing, however. USA Swimming updated its trans participation policy in February to require evaluation of eligibility for trans women by a three-person panel, and 36 months of testosterone suppression; More months than Thomas had undergone. However, the NCAA opted to not impose that policy for its 2022 swimming and diving championships, and Thomas merely had to comply with the previous policy: A demonstrated testosterone level below 10 nanomoles per liter.
Critics of the NCAA have proposed trans women should compete separately from cis women. Thomas told Barnes she objects to that so-called solution.
“If you say, like, you can compete, but you can’t score or you’re in an extra lane nine, that’s very othering towards trans people,” said Thomas. “And it is not offering them the same level of respect and opportunity to play and to compete.”
She told them it comes down to this: Trans women are women.
“It’s no different than a cis woman taking a spot on a travel team or a scholarship. It’s a part of athletics, where people are competing against each other. It’s not taking away opportunities from cis women, really. Trans women are women, so it’s still a woman who is getting that scholarship or that opportunity,” she said.
Besides looking to the Olympic trials, Thomas said she will attend grad school in the fall and plans to focus on civil rights and public interest law.
“Having seen such hateful attacks on trans rights through legislation, fighting for trans rights and trans equality is something that I’ve become much more passionate about and want to pursue,” said Thomas.
Watch ESPN’s report on Lia Thomas by clicking here.
Swimmer Lia Thomas breaks silence about backlash, future plans – GMA
Sports
Attitude! French ice dancers nail ‘Vogue’ routine
Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry strike a pose in memorable Olympics performance
Madonna’s presence is being felt at the Olympic Games in Italy.
Guillaume Cizeron and his rhythm ice dancing partner Laurence Fournier Beaudry of France performed a flawless skate to Madonna’s “Vogue” and “Rescue Me” on Monday.
The duo scored an impressive 90.18 for their effort, the best score of the night.
“We’ve been working hard the whole season to get over 90, so it was nice to see the score on the screen,” Fournier Beaudry told Olympics.com. “But first of all, just coming out off the ice, we were very happy about what we delivered and the pleasure we had out there. With the energy of the crowd, it was really amazing.”
Watch the routine on YouTube here.
Italy
Olympics Pride House ‘really important for the community’
Italy lags behind other European countries in terms of LGBTQ rights
The four Italian advocacy groups behind the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics’ Pride House hope to use the games to highlight the lack of LGBTQ rights in their country.
Arcigay, CIG Arcigay Milano, Milano Pride, and Pride Sport Milano organized the Pride House that is located in Milan’s MEET Digital Culture Center. The Washington Blade on Feb. 5 interviewed Pride House Project Manager Joseph Naklé.
Naklé in 2020 founded Peacox Basket Milano, Italy’s only LGBTQ basketball team. He also carried the Olympic torch through Milan shortly before he spoke with the Blade. (“Heated Rivalry” stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie last month participated in the torch relay in Feltre, a town in Italy’s Veneto region.)
Naklé said the promotion of LGBTQ rights in Italy is “actually our main objective.”
ILGA-Europe in its Rainbow Map 2025 notes same-sex couples lack full marriage rights in Italy, and the country’s hate crimes law does not include sexual orientation or gender identity. Italy does ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, but the country’s nondiscrimination laws do not include gender identity.
ILGA-Europe has made the following recommendations “in order to improve the legal and policy situation of LGBTI people in Italy.”
• Marriage equality for same-sex couples
• Depathologization of trans identities
• Automatic co-parent recognition available for all couples
“We are not really known to be the most openly LGBT-friendly country,” Naklé told the Blade. “That’s why it (Pride House) was really important for the community.”
“We want to use the Olympic games — because there is a big media attention — and we want to use this media attention to raise the voice,” he added.
Naklé noted Pride House will host “talks and roundtables every night” during the games that will focus on a variety of topics that include transgender and nonbinary people in sports and AI. Another will focus on what Naklé described to the Blade as “the importance of political movements now to fight for our rights, especially in places such as Italy or the U.S. where we are going backwards, and not forwards.”
Seven LGBTQ Olympians — Italian swimmer Alex Di Giorgio, Canadian ice dancers Paul Poirier and Kaitlyn Weaver, Canadian figure skater Eric Radford, Spanish figure skater Javier Raya, Scottish ice dancer Lewis Gibson, and Irish field hockey and cricket player Nikki Symmons — are scheduled to participate in Pride House’s Out and Proud event on Feb. 14.
Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood representatives are expected to speak at Pride House on Feb. 21.
The event will include a screening of Mariano Furlani’s documentary about Pride House and LGBTQ inclusion in sports. The MiX International LGBTQ+ Film and Queer Culture Festival will screen later this year in Milan. Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood is also planning to show the film during the 2028 Summer Olympics.
Naklé also noted Pride House has launched an initiative that allows LGBTQ sports teams to partner with teams whose members are either migrants from African and Islamic countries or people with disabilities.
“The objective is to show that sports is the bridge between these communities,” he said.
Bisexual US skier wins gold
Naklé spoke with the Blade a day before the games opened. The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics will close on Feb. 22.
More than 40 openly LGBTQ athletes are competing in the games.
Breezy Johnson, an American alpine skier who identifies as bisexual, on Sunday won a gold medal in the women’s downhill. Amber Glenn, who identifies as bisexual and pansexual, on the same day helped the U.S. win a gold medal in team figure skating.
Glenn said she received threats on social media after she told reporters during a pre-Olympics press conference that LGBTQ Americans are having a “hard time” with the Trump-Vance administration in the White House. The Associated Press notes Glenn wore a Pride pin on her jacket during Sunday’s medal ceremony.
“I was disappointed because I’ve never had so many people wish me harm before, just for being me and speaking about being decent — human rights and decency,” said Glenn, according to the AP. “So that was really disappointing, and I do think it kind of lowered that excitement for this.”
Puerto Rico
Bad Bunny shares Super Bowl stage with Ricky Martin, Lady Gaga
Puerto Rican activist celebrates half time show
Bad Bunny on Sunday shared the stage with Ricky Martin and Lady Gaga at the Super Bowl halftime show in Santa Clara, Calif.
Martin came out as gay in 2010. Gaga, who headlined the 2017 Super Bowl halftime show, is bisexual. Bad Bunny has championed LGBTQ rights in his native Puerto Rico and elsewhere.
“Not only was a sophisticated political statement, but it was a celebration of who we are as Puerto Ricans,” Pedro Julio Serrano, president of the LGBTQ+ Federation of Puerto Rico, told the Washington Blade on Monday. “That includes us as LGBTQ+ people by including a ground-breaking superstar and legend, Ricky Martin singing an anti-colonial anthem and showcasing Young Miko, an up-and-coming star at La Casita. And, of course, having queer icon Lady Gaga sing salsa was the cherry on the top.”
La Casita is a house that Bad Bunny included in his residency in San Juan, the Puerto Rican capital, last year. He recreated it during the halftime show.
“His performance brought us together as Puerto Ricans, as Latin Americans, as Americans (from the Americas) and as human beings,” said Serrano. “He embraced his own words by showcasing, through his performance, that the ‘only thing more powerful than hate is love.’”
Top Democrats re-introduce trans bill of rights
A dozen Senegalese men arrested for ‘unnatural acts’
Meet D.C.’s Most Eligible Queer Singles
Local LGBTQ groups, activists to commemorate Black History Month
