Londoners are recovering, and Twitter is laughing, after a trans woman who competed in the London Marathon Sunday placed 6160th in a field of over 20,000 and earned the outrage of transphobes everywhere.
Halfway through the race Sunday, Glenique Frank – who finished with a time of four hours, 11 minutes, 28 seconds competing in the 50-to-54 age bracket – crossed the Tower Bridge and declared, “Girl power!” and “I’m going to be a granny!” in an interview with the BBC.
“This is my 17th marathon, and I’m doing the six majors,” Frank said. “I’ve also run in the Comrades Marathon in South Africa, where I’m from. Shout out to my beautiful son, who’s having a baby, so I’m going to be a granny! Granny G!”
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The news you care about, reported on by the people who care about you.Frank’s marathon high was matched by transphobes’ indignation seeing the trans woman declare “Girl power!” and that she was allowed to run the race as a woman in the first place.
“Nearly 14,000 women finished in a worse finish position because of him,” Mara Yamauchi, who came in sixth at the Beijing Olympics marathon and is the U.K.’s third fastest woman in the distance.
The elite runner told Telegraph Sports: “World Athletics and U.K. Athletics have rules that post-puberty males competing in the female category is unfair. This male competed under U.K. Athletics’ transitional arrangements, but it is still wrong and unfair.”
Yamauchi referred to new guidelines adopted by the U.K.’s governing sports organization that bar trans women and girls from competing in the groups’ sanctioned events. U.K. Athletics announced the blanket ban on March 31.
At the Manchester Marathon earlier this month, a trans woman running in the women’s section wore a pink t-shirt declaring, “F**k UK Athletics.”
While the new rules grandfathered trans athletes already entered in events, the distinction wasn’t enough for Yamauchi.
“Some people say that if males are on the podium, it matters, but not if they finish lower down,” she said. “What this effectively says is that women and girls who are not that good at sport don’t deserve fairness, which I think is appalling.”
Yamauchi also slammed Frank for running the New York Marathon as a man last year (the Brit told the New York Post she was forced to enter under the name and gender that’s listed on her passport).
Referring to Frank’s plans to run a Boston-London double in April 2024, Yamauchi mused – misgendering Frank – “I wonder which category will take his fancy then?”
Twitter was musing, as well, on the outrage over an accomplished athlete who’s raised over £30K for charity running the London Marathon and 17 other events.
