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Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas is pushing back against critics who say she doesn’t belong in the pool with other women, declaring “I’m not a man.”
The 22-year-old University of Pennsylvania swimmer making waves amid a national debate on whether transgender athletes should be allowed to compete against biological females said there’s no middle ground in the controversy as she sees it.
“The very simple answer is that I’m not a man,” she told Sports Illustrated in an exclusive interview posted online Thursday.
“I’m a woman, so I belong on the women’s team. Trans people deserve that same respect every other athlete gets.”
Thomas, an economics major originally from Texas, said she started questioning her identity while at Westlake High School in Austin.
“I felt off, disconnected with my body,” Thomas recalled during a series of interviews with the magazine in January, her first public comments since sitting down for a podcast in December with swimming site SwimSwam.
Thomas later told her brother between her freshman and sophomore years at Penn, where she had been paired with a trans mentor once on campus. She then informed her parents, who were supportive of her transition.
“We will do everything and anything we need to do to have Lia be a part of this family,” Thomas’ father, Bob, told Sports Illustrated. “We were not going to lose her.”
Still, Thomas’ gender dysphoria only heightened during her second year at Penn despite coming out to her family.
“I was very depressed,” she said, leading to less time in the pool. “I got to the point where I couldn’t go to school. I was missing classes. My sleep schedule was super messed up. Some days I couldn’t get out of bed. I knew at that moment I needed something to address this.”
Thomas, who still hadn’t come out to her Penn coaches and teammates, later began hormone replacement therapy in May 2019, but knew it could come at a severe cost, she said.
“I did HRT knowing and accepting I might not swim again,” she said. “I was just trying to live my life.”
Thomas started feeling “a lot better and healthier pretty quickly” once starting hormone replacement therapy. She then came to the realization between her sophomore and junior years that she wanted to swim with other women at Penn.
Thomas ultimately competed with men during her junior year, first donning a women’s suit in the 1,000-yard freestyle against Columbia male swimmers in November 2019.
Thomas, previously known as Will, then started identifying as Lia Catherine Thomas on New Year’s Eve 2020 after her mother came up with the name.
“It’s a milestone in a very long process of transitioning where you feel like this is who I am, and I’m going to live this,” Thomas told Sports Illustrated. “In a way, it was sort of a rebirth, for the first time in my life, feeling fully connected to my name and who I am and living who I am. I am Lia.”
After taking a year off to keep her final season of eligibility intact, Thomas started swimming with Penn again in the summer of 2021 – nearly two years after starting hormone replacement therapy.
She went on to dominate a November 2021 meet, posting NCAA season-best times in 200-yard freestyle and 500-yard freestyle. Her torrid pace has continued of late as well, setting two new pool records earlier this month at the Ivy League championships while taking home two titles.
“I’ve been reinvigorated,” Thomas said. “I’ve been swimming for 17 years, but for [only] a short part of that time have I felt fully engaged. After coming and being my authentic self, I could really start to see a future. Before I came out, I couldn’t visualize a future.”
Not everyone was supportive of Thomas’ journey, however, including some members of her own team. Sixteen members of Penn’s women’s team said she should be barred from competition after swimming for three years at the school with other men, claiming she has an “unfair biological advantage.”
Thomas has been allowed to compete this season because she had been taking testosterone suppression treatment for more than a year. She was ruled eligible to compete at this year’s Ivy League championships earlier this month as eligibility requirements are now left up to individual sports.
Thomas, who has applied to law school, now has her sights set on representing Team USA at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. But first she’ll swim in the NCAA Women’s Division I Swimming and Diving Championships starting on March 16 in Atlanta, where she’s favored to win the 200- and 500-yard freestyle events.
“I don’t know exactly what the future of my swimming will look like after this year, but I would love to continue doing it,” Thomas told Sports Illustrated. “I want to swim and compete as who I am.”
But Thomas realizes she’s isn’t swimming against the tide just for herself.
“I just want to show trans kids and younger trans athletes that they’re not alone,” she said. “They don’t have to choose between who they are and the sport they love.”
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