Racing driver Charlie Martin says ‘trans athletes are not a threat’ in face-off with Sharron Davies
Charlie uses her platform to improve transgender awareness and acceptance in the world. (Jamey Price Photo)
British endurance racing car driver Charlie Martin has backed trans inclusion in sports during an appearance on a BBC radio programme alongside outspoken “gender critic” Sharron Davies.
In an episode of Across the Red Line on Radio 4 on Thursday (15 August), former Olympic swimmer Davies argued that transgender women shouldn’t be involved in women’s sport.
Martin, who made history in 2020 as the first trans driver in “one of motor racing’s toughest endurance races”, the Adac Total 24hr Nürburgring, responded by saying transgender athletes were not a threat and had been taking part in sports for “a hundred years”, adding: “Trans men were taking part in the 1920s, this is not a new phenomenon.
“The International Olympic Committee has allowed trans people to compete since 2004, and in that time not a single trans person has won a medal, broken a record, or dominated.
Martin came out as trans publicly in 2018, at a time when she said there was “no LGBTQ+ visibility in the sport at all”.
She went on to say: “Trans people make up one per cent of the population… the idea that trans people will dominate sport against the other 99 per cent of people in the world is highly improbable.”
She then decried the “mass panic” surrounding trans people – especially transgender women – saying that women’s sport comes up against “a combination of misogyny, socio-economic disparity, unequal pay, a lack of women in sports leadership, a lack of funding, a lack of media coverage… trans people are not the problem here”.
Davies, however, compared trans inclusion in women’s sports to doping, claiming when she was an Olympian, young female athletes on what was then the East German team were given testosterone to improve their performance.
She campaigned for “open” categories in which only trans people compete – an idea that has yet to gain traction in elite sports.
“We’ve been sacrificed on the altar of ‘woke’, women’s rights across the board have been sacrificed,” Davies claimed. “I don’t believe the solution is to try to include somebody in a category where it doesn’t fit, maybe the solution is to try to create extra categories.”
Martin responded by saying several transgender people she knows have “withdrawn from sport” because of the “toxic” debate around inclusion.
“The vast majority of these people want to go to their local gym, play on their local sports team, these aren’t professional people trying to make a career and break world records, they’re just people who want to enjoy sport… these divisions are there.”
While a number of elite sporting bodies have banned or limited trans inclusion, several athletes have defended trans people, with former Olympic champion Kelly Holmes saying she “totally supports my trans siblings”.
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