The runner-up of an officially sanctioned USA Cycling race is speaking out after she lost to a transgender opponent — claiming she wasn’t made aware beforehand that the eventual winner would be competing in the race.
“If I had known, I wouldn’t have spent thousands of dollars in travel and time off work to come and do a race,” cyclist Julie Peterson told Fox News.
Peterson came in second place to her transgender opponent, Kate Phillips, who took the gold at the Lyons Masters National Championships in Wisconsin on Tuesday.
After finishing second, Peterson refused to take the podium in protest.
“I said, ‘I don’t want to race against a man,’ and they quickly scolded me and said ‘Oh, you can’t call him a man,’ and I’m like ‘Well, he is a man,’ so I was quickly scolded and corrected that it is a woman and I don’t even know what to say,” Peterson told officials, according to FOX News.
Peterson’s actions sparked a wave of frustration from other women cyclists who said they were disheartened at having to compete against athletes who were born male, according to FOX News.
Peterson, who said she wasn’t aware that Phillips was competing after she had registered for the race herself, argued with officials about the eventual victor’s participation in the event, the report said.
“You could clearly see the power that he had,” Peterson told Fox News Digital about Phillips.
Debbie Milne, another veteran racing cyclist who finished seventh place, shared In Peterson’s indignation. She criticized USA Cycling for allowing Phillips to compete.
“To be fair to all humans, if we want to say him or her, he was born a biological male, that is a fact,” Milne told Fox News Digital. “And that is the thing that makes it an unfair advantage. Whatever has happened after that is a whole different topic.”
Milne said there are sweeping advantages to being born a man and racing against a woman.
“I’ve raced for 25 years in conditions that only women can understand. There’s a lot that only a born female woman goes through because of the cycles that we have,” she said, according to FOX News.
“Even that alone is something that a man-born biological male can never experience. There’s nothing that can stimulate that, when you show up to the race and you are at the worst point of the monthly cycle and you know you’re at a disadvantage,” Milne added.
Like Peterson, Milne had no idea that she was going to be competing against the trans athlete in the race.
“I totally did not expect this, to drive 13 hours, to come and do a national championship,” Milne said. “I had no idea. I’d like to have known that’s what the terms were if I came. But that wasn’t even made known to me.”
Kristina Gray, a veteran women’s cyclist who did not participate in Tuesday’s race, told Fox News she’s also had to compete against trans cyclists in her racing career.
“In my last 10 years of racing, I’ve had to race against biological males, I’ve been forced to be on the podium with many of them, more recently the last five years,” Gray said. “In Oregon…there is a biological male in our races, every weekend, practically.”
The three outraged women cyclists contacted the Independent Council on Women’s Sports to spread the word about the outcome of the race.
The Post has reached out to USA Cycling and Phillips for comment.
The USA Cycling transgender eligibility policy allows for biological males to compete in the women’s category under certain conditions, according to FOX News: