Sports Illustrated - USA (2022-04)

(Maropa) #1

Fresh off her final


practice of the week,


the most controversial athlete


in America sat in


the corner of a nearly empt y


Philadelphia coffeehouse


with her back to the wall.


62


Lia Thomas had done some of her best work this season
while feeling cornered. On this January evening her long
torso was wrapped in a University of Pennsylvania swim
and dive jacket, her hair still damp from a swim—roughly
three miles staring at the black line on the bottom of
the pool. She looked exhausted. As college students
across the country were digging into their Friday nights,
Thomas was thinking about her weekend plans: sleeping,
studying and another grueling swim practice.
This had been a season unlike any in her 22 years,
and unlike any in the history of her sport. The shy senior
economics major from Austin became one of the most
dominant college athletes in the country and, as a result,
the center of a national debate—a living, breathing,
real-time Rorschach test for how society views those
who challenge conventions.
“I just want to show trans kids and younger trans ath-
letes that they’re not alone,” she says at the coffeehouse.
“They don’t have to choose between who they are and
the sport they love.”
In her first year swimming for the Penn women’s team
after three seasons competing against men, Thomas
throttled her competition. She set pool, school and
Ivy League records en route to becoming the nation’s
most powerful female collegiate swimmer. Photos of
Thomas resting at a pool wall and waiting for the rest
of the field to finish have become a popular visual
shorthand of her dominance.

Entering the NCAA Women’s Division I Swimming
and Diving Championships, which began March 16 in
Atlanta, Thomas was a favorite to win individual titles
in the 200- and 500-yard freestyle events and also had a
shot in the 100-yard freestyle. She was a threat to break
longstanding collegiate records held by Katie Ledecky
and Missy Franklin, two of the most beloved American
Olympians of this century. Thomas says she has ambi-
tions to compete beyond college, which could set her on
a course to be Ledecky’s teammate at the 2024 Games in
Paris—and perhaps challenge Ledecky’s Olympic records.
“I don’t know exactly what the future of my swim-
ming will look like after this year, but I would love to
continue doing it,” Thomas says. “I want to swim and
compete as who I am.”
A vocal faction wonders, though, whether her par-
ticipation in women’s swimming is fair. In January,
Michael Phelps said there needs to be an “even playing
field” within the sport. The editor of Swimming World
likened Thomas to “the doping-fueled athletes of
East Germany and China” from past Olympic Games.
Thomas’s story has also become a right-wing obsession,
a regular topic of discussion on Fox News. Conservative
opinion sites have called her a man and deadnamed
her, purposely using the name she went by before tran-
sitioning. Her moves have been minutely tracked by
the U.K.’s Daily Mail, including once with cruel detail
about her habits in the women’s locker room provided
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