Madisan DeBos joins the podcast this week to share her story. She has bravely spoken out against the unfairness she has experienced as she’s been forced to compete against men in female college sports. She has said that women racers can’t compete against trans athletes, but they don’t have a choice.
Madisan DeBos is a cross-country and track athlete at Southern Utah University whose relay team during the 2020 season lost to a team that included a transgender athlete. DeBos has been running since she was 5 years old.
TRANSCRIPT
Beverly Hallberg:
Welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg. It’s an honor to have on Madisan DeBos today. She has bravely outspoken, been outspoken against the unfairness she has experienced as she’s been forced to compete against men in female collegiate sports. She has said that women racers can’t compete against trans athletes, but they don’t have a choice. So that is why she’s with us today to share her story. Madisan DeBos is a cross country and track athlete at Southern Utah State University whose relay team during the 2020 season lost to a team that included a transgender athlete. Madisan has been running since she was five years old. Madisan, a pleasure to have you on She Thinks today.
Madisan DeBos:
Awesome. Thank you for having me.
Beverly Hallberg:
Before we get into the controversy and the reason why you’ve been speaking out, I would just like to learn a little bit more about your interest in this sport and what it’s been like to train over the years. How much time have you dedicated to it?
Madisan DeBos:
Yeah. So I started running back when I was five years old. We showed up at a road race. My mom used to run road races all the time. So I grew up watching her race and I decided I wanted to run. My parents put me in the race thinking I’d run 100 meters and stop, but ended up running the whole mile race and fell in love with running then. I ran throughout middle school. I ran throughout high school. The training to get to this level in cross country and track has been grueling, but amazing. All the decisions that you make growing up and coming into college are all based around this sport that you dedicate your entire life to.
Beverly Hallberg:
About how many hours do you train in a week? How many miles do you run in a week? What does that look like?
Madisan DeBos:
Yeah. So we do more by mileage than hours. Practice ends up being around two hours, but on average, we’re running anywhere from eight to 10 miles on a normal day, and then 10 to 14 or 12 to 14 on long run days. So we’re running anywhere from 55 to I hit 68 miles last week. So it is lots and lots of running on top of weight lifting, on top of watching nutrition, and the most important, recovery.
Beverly Hallberg:
How many calories can you eat in a day? I’m sure that’s a question you get quite often. When you’re running that much, you need to eat a lot, right?
Madisan DeBos:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s actually been something that our team really has been focusing on this past year was realizing how many calories. We figured it out that on average, if you’re running seven miles a day, we all needed around 3,000, which we run more than that. So we’re all eating anywhere from 33 to like 4,000 calories a day depending on how much you run that day.
Beverly Hallberg:
With this just shows, there’s a lot of time, obviously, that goes into this, a lot of effort, and what you hope is a lot of reward from it. So I know, as I mentioned in the introduction, you have started to compete against men, trans women. Is this something you would ever thought about when you’ve competed all growing up that you may actually have to compete against a man?
Madisan DeBos:
No, definitely not. I didn’t even think about it until someone, my coach was the one that actually told us that we would be competing against a biological male. Even when someone tells you, you don’t even realize what’s happening until you show up and experience it. It’s devastating hearing it, but competing against a biological male is a whole new level of defeat.
Beverly Hallberg:
So tell us why you think this is so unfair. I think a lot of us agree with you just looking on the surface level. But you know a lot about the human body. You were just talking about what you put your body through, including the calories. What is the advantage that men have against women physically in a sport like racing?
Madisan DeBos:
Yeah. This is what I always tell people. I’m in a sport, cross country. I show up every morning with the guys team. We go to practice every single day together. I cheer them on. I love watching them. They’re amazing. but we could never do a workout together, ever. Their one rep is my all out racing. You just see, they can put in, their bodies can withstand so many more miles than our girls team can. They run their paces so much faster than we do. They lift so much heavier than we do. The muscle mass on them, there’s just really a lot more differences than there are similarities between our guys and girls team.
Beverly Hallberg:
So in 2020, this was the first time you did compete against a biological man. Tell me about that competition. Who won? What was it like?
Madisan DeBos:
Yeah, just walking into that building, nobody was talking about racing. Nobody was excited to be there to watch, to race. It was all about the biological male that would be competing on the women’s side. You toe the line and you try to stay focus and you’ve been putting in months and years of hard work for this. I was a freshman that made our conference team. So I was ecstatic to have the opportunity to do that. All of it was taken away or dimmed just by a biological male competing against us.
Beverly Hallberg:
Was it the coach of the man who was competing telling him to slow down, so it didn’t look like he was going to win by too large of an amount?
Madisan DeBos:
Yeah. So this was in the distance medley relay. It was the male athlete’s coach that said, “Slow down.” I believe that the baton was given to the male athlete in sixth place. They moved up to third and then the coach yelled, “Slow down,” and then the male athlete ended up getting second.
Beverly Hallberg:
So what do you make of this coach doing this? It seems like there is a concerted effort at least on this coach’s part to try to hide the fact that men’s biology is going to allow them to be faster in this type of competition.
Madisan DeBos:
Yeah. I don’t really have words for that. It’s sad that a coach is taking away from so many athletes. They have to realize what they’re doing to female sports whenever they’re doing this. It makes you wonder if you’re yelling at an athlete to slow down at a conference championship, do you not realize that maybe that they have an advantage? Do you not realize the damage that you are doing to women’s sports by saying stuff like this and to the athletes all around you who are hearing you and watching you say this?
Beverly Hallberg:
For those who haven’t competed on your level, winning these types of races is more than just the pride that goes along with it and the competition. We are also talking about the ability to use this either for cash prizes. Aren’t there other benefits that come from winning these types of races?
Madisan DeBos:
Yeah. I think the biggest thing is it’s like you go to high school and high school sports are amazing. I and every other athlete would not be where we are without high school sports. But college is just it’s a whole new level of athletics. It is so hard to rise to the top, even if you may have been at the top in high school. So the amount of work that you have to do to get to the top is insane. You’re just kind of taking away that hard work from female athletes.
It’s not just about the winning. It’s not just about what may come out of it. Some girls, in order to get a scholarship, you may need to be at the top of your team. So that in itself, just winning a race could, oh, show your coach like, oh, I can give them more money for a scholarship or stuff like that. But it’s also just the fact of like it’s amazing to be at the top and it takes so, so, so, so much work and you’re just kind of taking that away from female athletes.
Beverly Hallberg:
What has the morale been like, not just for you, but for your whole team knowing that at a certain point, it doesn’t matter how much you train, that if men are allowed to compete against women, there is no way you can beat them?
Madisan DeBos:
I think for our team, it’s just kind of been, we all are, I don’t want to speak for everybody, but a lot of us are on the same page with it. We keep running, we keep putting in the hard work, but we also do realize the consequences in women’s sports by allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports and that there won’t be women’s sports. There’ll be men’s sports and co-ed sports. That’s what will happen if we continue to go down this path.
Beverly Hallberg:
Well, I want to take a brief moment to ask you our listeners a question. Are you a conservative woman? Do you feel problematic just for existing in today’s political landscape? We’ll have some information to share with you every Thursday morning on Problematic Women. Lauren Evans and Virginia Allen sort through the news to bring stories and interviews that are of particular interests to you. A problematic woman, that is a woman whose opinions are often excluded or even mocked by those on the so-called pro-women left.
Lauren and Virginia break down the news you care about in an upbeat and sharp witted way. So search for Problematic Women wherever you get your podcasts. Again, we’re talking to Madisan DeBos, a country and track athlete at Southern Utah State University. Madisan, wanted to just learn why you decided to speak out. So we know that other women have spoken out in different sports, such as women who have had to compete in swimming, NCAA swimming, especially if they competed against Lia Thomas, who has made a lot of news competing against women. What made you decide to speak?
Madisan DeBos:
I think for me, the biggest thing was I felt as if I was watching all of this go down and I was thinking, “Okay, who’s fighting for me? Who’s fighting for my teammates? Who’s fighting for women across the country?” Then I realized that I have a voice and I can use it. I look at these little girls, these younger girls who have dreams just like all of us did and I feel like, “Okay, they can’t fight for themselves right now. So I need to fight for them. If I want people to fight for me, then I need to fight for those girls that have dreams.” I pray that they can come up to collegiate sports and continue to have those dreams and continue to strive in athletics and not have to have it dimmed by biological men competing against them.
Beverly Hallberg:
What type of support have you received either from other athletes or parents or even young girls that you mentioned? You have a lot of people reaching out to you thanking you for the op-ed that you recently wrote that’s on foxnews.com, and also just in general, you speaking out on social media.
Madisan DeBos:
Yeah, no. I’ve had a ton of support. That’s why I’d say if you’re afraid to speak out, and it is scary, but the amount of support I have gotten has been amazing. My community back home has completely rallied around me and supported me, which has been the most rewarding thing. I’ve had moms send me videos of their little girls running their first races, or and even other sports, not just running. That in itself, just every single message that I get, it just makes me realize like, “Okay, this is exactly why I’m doing this, for these little girls and for their future.”
Yeah, you get the hate comments along with it and whatnot. But I think we have to realize, people are going to say things when they’re sitting behind a screen. They’re probably not going to say it to your face. Even if they did, I think we just have to continue to do the right thing and realize that 90% of it, if not 95% of it is positivity and support.
Beverly Hallberg:
What do you say to the negative comments when they claim that you are discriminating against a group of people? Do you view yourself as discriminating? If not, what do you say in response?
Madisan DeBos:
I don’t respond. I just let them say what they want to say. I feel very confident in what I’m speaking out about. I’m very knowledgeable on it. I go to school to learn about the human body. I have sat through conferences of doctors who have dedicated their lives to this. I am also an athlete myself. I’m around the guys’ cross country team all the time. So I just let people say what they’re going to say. I don’t want to be mean towards other people. I don’t want to name call. I don’t believe that’s the way that you make a difference in this world. So I just let them say what they’re going to say and I continue to use my voice for what I believe in. Yeah.
Beverly Hallberg:
One of the things I think it’s interesting about all of this is there’s been such a strong stance against using steroids and different type of supplements and drugs to enhance the body. How does that fit into this discussion?
Madisan DeBos:
I think those are very different. It’s a very different conversation, and not one I’ve talked a lot about, not one that I know a ton about. But I do know that there is a difference between a biological male and a biological female, and you cannot change a lot of those differences.
Beverly Hallberg:
Yeah. Yeah. Basically, you want to level the playing field for everyone and making sure that people can have a fair race. Just final question for you. I’m wondering what you’ve heard from the NCAA, if they have said anything in response to you speaking out and do you expect that there may be any concrete rules that the NCAA lays out? It seems that they’re really struggling to figure out where the fine line is in the issue between women and biological men competing against them.
Madisan DeBos:
Yeah, no. I haven’t. They’ve said nothing towards me. I haven’t heard anything about the NCAA, but I would hope that they could… You would hope at this point that it wouldn’t even be happening, but it is. I hope that they can look at what they’re doing, listen to the athletes, many athletes that are speaking out about this, listen to the doctors that are on these.
I got to listen to a doctor that’s on the rugby association or whatever that’s called and they just need to listen to people that know what they’re talking about, have the science, have the facts. That’s really what it is. It’s not feelings, it’s not emotions. Women’s hard work shouldn’t come down to somebody’s feelings. It should come down to science. By basing it off of feelings, you’re taking away all of that hard work.
Beverly Hallberg:
Well, we hope the NCAA does do the right thing eventually. They haven’t to this point. But with you and others speaking out, we were hoping that encourages them to do the right thing. But we so appreciate you speaking out, Madisan DeBos. Thank you so much for coming on She Thinks today.
Madisan DeBos:
Thank you so much for having me.
Beverly Hallberg:
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