Trans skateboarder beats 13-year-old girl to win NYC contest
admin2022-06-270 Comments
The 29-year-old finished above her teenage rival in New York
A 29-year-old transgender woman controversially defeated a 13-year-old girl in New York City on Saturday to win a skateboarding tournament.
Ricci Tres took home $500 by claiming top prize at the Boardr Open.
Finishing in second behind Tres, who also goes by the name ‘Ricci And Tres’, was Shiloh Catori, who placed 133 in Boardr’s Global Ranks.
Tres is ranked 838, but four of the six competitors in the competition were under the age of 17 with the youngest, Juri Ikura, just 10.
The biological and age discrepancies have been blasted on social media, with female skateboarder Taylor Silverman among the critics.
Silverman last spoke on this topic in May after repeatedly finishing in second place against biological males in competitions.
This time round, she was critical again by sharing a poster of the results and writing: “Male wins women’s skateboarding finals and money at the Boardr Open NYC presented by DC today.”
Male wins women’s skateboarding finals and money at the Boardr Open NYC presented by DC today. pic.twitter.com/fgqmHMq2Ez
Silverman’s post has been liked well over 5,000 times. In May, she revealed how she had been to “three different contests with trans women, two of which I placed second [in]”.
Silverman was particularly incensed that the transgender winner of the Redbull Cornerstone event she took part in took home $1,000 from the qualifiers, $1,000 for the best trick, and $3,000 for winning in the finals.
“This totaled $5,000 of the prize money meant for female athletes,” Silverman pointed out.
Regarding Tres, the spokeswoman for Republican Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, Christina Pushaw, questioned on Twitter why the skateboarder and a 28-year-old, Chrissy Brown, had been “competing against children.”
Tim Pool, an American broadcaster, claimed that biological males boast physical advantages in skateboarding due to their “higher centers of gravity granting advantages that cannot be removed with [hormone replacement therapy].”
Boardr has not responded to a request from Fox News for comment, but its decision to allow Tres to take part in the women’s event comes at a time when one of the biggest debates in sport centers around whether biological men should be allowed that right.
Global swimming authority FINA voted last week to ban transgender women from women’s events if they have completed any part of male puberty, and vowed to form an ‘open category’ for these athletes which directly impacts the plans of Paris 2024 Olympics hopeful and former UPenn college swimmer Lia Thomas.
FINA’s cycling counterpart the UCI has also doubled transition time to 24 months and halved the permitted amount of testosterone to 2.5 2.5nmol/L, which means that British cyclist Emily Bridges cannot compete in women’s competitions until 2023.
In the UK, Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries has revealed she will urge British sporting body chiefs to follow FINA’s lead when she meets them on Tuesday and make it “crystal clear” that women’s disciplines must be reserved for those born in the female sex.
Simultaneously, the administration of US President Joe Biden has signaled that it wants transgender athletes to enjoy the protections of Title IX which was passed in 1972 to prohibit sex-based discrimination while some states such as Louisiana have recently banned trans athletes from girls and women’s events.
