Olympic cyclist Inga Thompson joins She Thinks podcast as we celebrate the 51st anniversary of Title IX and Women’s Sports Week. Inga shares her story of racing through the years, including in the Olympics, fighting breast cancer, and her most recent battle—defending women by attacking the policy that lets men compete against women in cycling—for which she had to resign from the Cynisca Cycling team and was removed from the upcoming film “Uphill Climb.”
Inga Thompson is a 10-time national champion, three-time Olympian, and two-time podium finisher at the Women’s Tour de France. She is also a lifelong clean sport evangelist, women’s cycling advocate, and founder of the Inga Thompson Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that supports competitive women cyclists through meaningful financial assistance, mentorship, and promotion of ethical, drug-free competition in all sports. Inga now lives on her 160-acre horse-powered cattle ranch in Oregon.
TRANSCRIPT
Beverly Hallberg:
And welcome to She Thanks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg. And on today’s episode, Olympian cyclist Inga Thompson joins us on the 51st anniversary of Title IX. And on Women’s Sports Week, she’s going to share her story of racing through the years, including in the Olympics, and fighting breast cancer. Praise God, she is cancer free. And her most recent battle, defending women by attacking the policy that lets men compete against women in cycling. Currently she’s been removed from the UCI board, the world governing board for Sports Cycling when she called for cyclists to protest the unfair policy. A little bit more about Inga as we bring her on. She is a 10 time national champion, three-time Olympian, and two-time podium finisher at the Women’s Tour de France. She is also a lifelong clean sport evangelist, women’s cycling advocate and founder of the Inga Thompson Foundation. Inga, a pleasure to have you on She Thinks.
Inga Thompson:
Thank you so much for having me here.
Beverly Hallberg:
Oh, it’s exciting to have you on this date because we’re releasing this episode on the 51st anniversary of Title IX, which prohibits discrimination based on sex. Before we jump into the conversation, I wany to let our listeners know that Congress should pass the Women’s Bill of Rights. This would clarify the federal definition of sex as a person’s biological sex, either female or male at birth. So this would prevent some of the new rules that the Biden administration has put forward, which allow males who identify as women to share dorm rooms and locker rooms with females during sororities, etc. This would prevent it. So I want to let everyone know you can go to Women’sBillofRights.com and that’s Women’sBillofRights.com and add your name because we need everybody to join together and speak up on this. So, Inga, thank you for all your work on this issue and I think we would just, we should go back to the beginning and talk a little bit about your love of the sport of cycling. How were you first introduced to it?
Inga Thompson:
I was introduced to it actually through an injury. And what happened was, I had spent 10 years as a runner beforehand and, but growing up as a child, all I ever heard was, well, women don’t have any sports because I wanted to get into all these different sports as a child and it wasn’t available. And then when I turned 10, um, here comes Title IX. And so by the time that I hit junior high school, we actually had opportunities for the first time. I remember being a young girl and wanting to be a boy, not because I wanted to be a boy, but because I wanted to have the opportunities that boys had. And so, and that happened thankfully. So by the time I became a cyclist, I had 10 good years of running underneath me. And you see this all the time.
I call it the grassroots development of women athletes, and starts when we are children and it develops us. So by the time you have a lot of preparation before you actually ever hit the Olympics. And so I was on a running scholarship and I became injured and had picked up a bicycle to do some cross training for fitness. And here comes the first Women’s Olympics ever, the first women’s tour de France ever. And all I could think was I wanted to do that, it was the first ever. And so I gave up my scholarship and got onto a bike and I entered it. It was meteoric. I entered five different races and I won every one. And the fifth one actually allowed me to get into the Olympic trials. And my sixth race was the Olympic trials. And I made an Olympic team.
Granted I was the worst rider on the team, but I made an Olympic team. And all of this is because of Title IX, giving women the rights to equality when it comes to sports. And so my whole career is based off of Title IX. Had we not had Title IX, I never would’ve gotten into sports. I never would’ve been able to jump onto a bike and find my calling. And so I’m thankful for Title IX and I’m thankful for the women before me that fought so hard for us to have equal opportunities. And it has opened the door to so many women. Like you can look at all of the C level women in business and industry, you know, the CEO, the COO, CFOs, you can see that almost all of these women came from a sporting background. And so this is why I am fighting for women’s sports, is it doesn’t just affect us in sporting, opportunities in nationals, Olympics, or on any level, but it also affects us in the business/financial field, and in education. The repercussions are far beyond sports
Beverly Hallberg:
A question I’ve often asked women like yourself who have competed at high levels in women’s sports, I asked this question, did you ever expect that this would be the fight that you had where you would have to be talking about women competing with men? Was that ever even a thought to you?
Inga Thompson:
Never, never crossed my mind that we would be fighting to have women’s sex segregated spaces again. I mean, I can almost guarantee that back when they wrote Title IX and they were fighting for women to have these equal opportunities, what was not included in there is that we’re going to fight for men with gender dysphoria. This was very specifically sex segregated based on our biology. And it wasn’t about gender dysphoria or the way that people felt it. And so to come in after the fact, 50 years of Title IX being in place and decide to change the language from sex to gender seems very disingenuous of what this law was written for.
Beverly Hallberg:
And you’ve made a lot of news as of late because you have been vocal on the this issue. And it’s because there is a male cyclist identifying as a woman Austin Killips, who recently won a race in North Carolina. And this is what is maybe not so shocking, but it just shows you the difference in the biology of men and women. He won by five minutes over the next finisher. And the woman who won second play, she even said in an interview that her power just wasn’t comparable and she even suggested a separate category for trans athletes. Tell us a little bit about this race itself. Is this the first time that there has been a male cyclist who identifies as a woman who’s been allowed to compete and has won? Where have things been in the cycling sport?
Inga Thompson:
Specifically in cycling, it started back in, I think about 2018-19 when Rachel McKinnon came in as a transgender woman. And they won the world championships a couple years in a row and took away some world medals from some very, very accomplished women. And you now see, I think we’ve have like over 50 transgender women in women’s sports racking up titles, medals leaderboards wins at grassroots levels all the way up to the World Championship, say with Rachel McKinnon. And so now when we have Austin Killips coming in, this is now in the elite women category. And so what we’re seeing is that Austin has a very good shot at being on the world championship team coming up and taking the long team spot for the Olympics. And when we’re looking behind the scenes at the training of Austin Killips they have the ability to train at a level that only men can train at.
I was looking at the data that was put in forth of Austin Killips training, and for 10 years I was arguably, you know, the top three in the world this whole time. And I’m looking at the training, I’m like, I never could have trained at that level. And what was amazing was for Austin Killips to train at that level and go into the Tour of Gila and still win the Tour of Gila. I mean, I’d have been toast. I never could have done that type of training and still won a stage race. You have to go into these things rested. And so what we’re seeing here is a very, very clear example that over 22, I think we’re even above that now at this point, 22 peer-reviewed studies that show that no amount of testosterone suppression mitigates the advantages of being born male.
You just, you cannot uncooked the egg of what testosterone does for a male body. You know, plus you have the receptors of the Y chromosome, but you have testosterone surges, you have testosterone surges throughout, you know, the pre-pubescent stage. And then at puberty you have that final surge of testosterone. And when you look at WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency, what you’ll see is if somebody’s tested twice for testosterone, you have a lifelong band. Because what testosterone does is it allows you to train at a higher level than you ever could have trained. So say you were here, you can now train up in here, and when you go off the testosterone, you come down to here, you never come back to where you were. And so this happens with athletes when they cheat and this is why they have a lifelong band. And so now you have a male that has been bathed in testosterone basically their whole life. You can’t undo that. And while almost all of us, everyone that I know has sympathy for transgender people, we want them to live their best life, but women’s sports is not the place to validate their identity.
Beverly Hallberg:
So if I’m understanding, if I could jump in here, if I’m understanding correctly, the only thing that is measured in order to be able to compete if you’re a biological man who identifies as a woman is just based on current testosterone levels. Is it anything else beyond that that’s tested?
Inga Thompson:
You can take away the testosterone and it doesn’t mitigate the advantages, but what testosterone does do is it gives you the ability to use your energy better through the mitochondria. You have bigger heart, bigger lungs, more blood, the tendon strength never goes away. The power never goes away depending on the sport. Even if you take all of the testosterone away, you still retain a 10% to a 45% advantage that will never ever go away. And so like you could say, we’ll just look at women, some of us raised, I think I raised it like I was a 0.5 NALs per liter, and they allow up to 2.5 NALs per liter for a woman. So even when a transgender woman comes in, they’re on the upper end of this spectrum. And then you have somebody like me down here at 0.5.
Well, even if you play with our testosterone levels between 0.5 and 2.0, it doesn’t change your athletic performance at that level just a little bit. But what changes it is if they’ve been bathed in 50 NALs per liter throughout their whole life with the combination of the Y chromosome. So you can take a woman, you could take me, you could dopamine me to the gills, and I could never compete with a man, nor could I ever compete with a man who has dropped his testosterone down to 2.5. There’s XX and there’s XY and you can’t, you cannot balance that out.
Beverly Hallberg
When you see Austin Killips in this race win by five minutes, do you find that the governing board for cycling looks at this and says, maybe we need to have different measures. Maybe this doesn’t seem fair? Or is that just anathema, you’re not allowed to say anything against it at all? Because I think to most people they see this and see it for what it is. And that is men are typically stronger than women. It’s not an offensive thing to say, we’re just different. But do you think that there’s going be any backtracking on this at all?
Inga Thompson:
No. They don’t want to backtrack. They have had the science for five years, over five years. They know that it’s not fair. They have zero intention of walking this back to fairness. Because when you look , let’s go with the International Cycling Union, the UCI, Xavier Beard, their medical commissioner quotes all of these different scientific studies about how males retain their advantage. But he basically summarizes it with inclusion is more important than fairness. And they have been blocking us for five years every step of the way. They won’t look at the science. They say, well, we’ll look at it later. Well, we’re afraid that we’re going to get sued. You didn’t submit this in the correct way. You have to go through CPA Women, oh wait, you can’t really go through the Professional Cycling Association for the women.
The Cycling Professional Association of Women has to go through the men. And so you realize that they never, ever have wanted to work with us. It’s just been stonewalling, gaslighting, and blocking us every step of the way. And so when you have David Lappartient who is the president of the International Cycling Union, wanting to be on the International Olympic Committee Board, you see that with the International Olympic Committee stepping away saying there’s no presumption of advantage of having testosterone. They’re, they’re kicking the can down the road to the international federations, putting the pressure on them. But if you want to be part of the International Olympic Committee, you better not change the rules. Because what we saw was after Austin Killip won Tour of Gila and there was this uproar, the International Cycling Union said, “we stand by our policy.” So, we started talking protest, and then suddenly the International Cycling Unit is like, well, maybe we should look at this again.
But they’re not, it is disingenuous throwing it out there to maybe get the protest to go away. But we know that it’s disingenuous because they said, well, we don’t really want to survey the female athletes because that would be based on their feelings instead of their science. Right. But they’re going to allow men to be in there based on their feelings. Right. And a and a scientific paper that has since been debunked, they have not contacted the women’s cycling, the Professional Cycling Association because they said, well, you’re transphobic because you introduced all of these scientific papers. So they’re putting the women in this damned if you do, damned if you don’t, you know, you put out the scientific papers and they’re saying, oh, you’re kind of transphobic, but we’re not going to allow the survey because it’s placed on the women’s feelings.
And yet, and yet they won’t let us put fourth scientific papers. So you see how they got us in this, right? This catch 22, no matter what you we do, we’re not going to let you put this science forth to educate these young women. And then you have the medical commissioner saying that inclusion is more important than fairness. It is getting blocked every step of the way. And so I hear again and again, well, you have to challenge the policy. Well, we’ve been challenging the policy for five years and we’ve got nowhere. So we’re now we need to protest.
Beverly Hallberg:
Right. And you did protest and there was backlash for that. Correct. You were getting ready to be part of the UCI board. What happened when you protested?
Inga Thompson:
That? That’s not quite true. I was on a board called Cynisca. It was a women’s team and Cynisca kind of works hand in hand with USA cycling. And, um, the man who bankrolled Cynisca was also paying me to be an advocate. And Cynisca understood my stance and they supported my stance. And after the issue happened with Riley Gaines, where she was attacked at San Francisco State University, they wanted me to speak out more. And I said, that may not be a good combination being on the board of directors from Cynisca. So I stepped down several weeks previous to this. And after that the retaliation happened of Cynisca putting out their nasty statement that I was dehumanizing and demagoguery. And I’m like, well, hold on a second. It’s dehumanizing to ask women to race against men and to take away their fairness and their equality and demagoguery.
I mean, that’s political statements. We’re talking about human rights issues and human rights issues for women and the right to have equal opportunities. Um, and I think it was just nothing more than retaliation on Cynisca’s part. Maybe it was because they’re working hand in hand with USA cycling which works hand in hand with the International Cycling Union. I don’t know what the trickle-down effect of that was, but I know that they have put out their very best effort to shut me down and to keep me by speaking, by putting out such an awful press release, which I have all the emails to show that they’re lying. I mean, I can. And I’ve supplied those to many people.
Beverly Hallberg:
So, so when you think about the, the pushback when you spoke up and there was pushback against you and called you all kinds of names and said that you were transphobic, etc. Has there been anything negative that happened to you financially since you are part of these different groups? Has it been a big blow to you, and still worth speaking up about it of course, and we’re so glad that you did. But what has it meant to you?
Inga Thompson:
It’s been difficult. I’ve had to step away from a few boards. Even though I’ve stepped away gracefully, the boards have not been graceful. Like you watched what Cynisca did that was less than graceful on their part. I helped out and helped funded a film called Uphill Climb, which is about the Women’s Tour de France. And I have been removed from that because I’m speaking out and I was laughing with the people who put it to together. I said, “You know, just about all the women that you filmed on there have spoken out as I have.” And they said, “Yeah, but you’re the face of it, so we have to remove you.” So, I’ve been removed from basically they’re trying to remove me from the history of the Women’s Tour de France, which I was a big part of.
And then the other woman in there Marian Clingnet, she was absolutely instrumental to the Women’s Tour de France fem coming back, you know, because we had the Women’s Tour de France from 1984 to 1989, and then they cut the Women’s Tour de France. And so there were many people that fought to get the Women’s Tour de France back and to get it going. And I’m one of those people that is being removed from the history books of this because of my stance for speaking out for women. And that can be kind of painful, to try to erase you from history that way. And, you know, especially when I put so much money, effort into helping to get this project going, I mean, it’s such a slap in the face.
Beverly Hallberg:
What has the support been like? I’m sure you’ve heard from a lot of women’s cyclists who have thanked you for doing this.
Inga Thompson:
I have no exaggeration when I say that over 90% of the women have sent me thank you notes. And it has somehow been conveyed to me that they appreciate what I’m doing. They can’t speak out because they can’t lose their jobs. They can’t lose, you know, their positions. And I’m in a position where I can speak out and I have still really suffered a lot of repercussions from this. But not the way that they would, I mean, I’ve had safe sport violations filed against me for speaking up for women. And a lot of these women would lose their jobs coaching. They would lose their sponsorship, they would lose their funding. And you can see the attack that was put on me. This is the same attack that goes up against these women that are trying to protect their athletes. They’re actively silenced. And that’s the disheartening point, right? Is like you can’t have a fair discussion and have a civil discussion about it and you are silenced and shut up. What does that tell you right there?
Beverly Hallberg:
Means they don’t have an argument they silence you because they don’t want to have that debate. And I think one of the things that you’ve brought out in this conversation you’ve talked about before is just the additional scientific evidence that we are learning about what happens to a man’s body once they go through puberty. Uh, how there are lifelong advantages to that. And I want to let our listeners know we do have a second addition to the groundbreaking report on competition. So the first one we did was called Title IX Male bodied Athletes and the Threat to Women’s Sports, this was put out by not just IWF, but the Independent Women’s Law Center. Well, there is a new report put out this week, this is part two to it, which does share stories of women like Inga, things that you’ve experienced. But this report provides crucial updates on the changing legal landscape and analyzes additional scientific evidence regarding the lasting athletic advantage conferred by male puberty. This is a really important report. Um, it was released this week. People can go to iwf.org. And I think the reason why it’s so important is the science backs it up. And you were just talking about Inga that no debate is allowed. And I think it’s because they don’t have science to back them up. We know they don’t. And so the only way to move forward is to silence people.
Inga Thompson:
Yeah. It’s to silence people. They keep changing what they call a woman. I mean, we’ve gone from being “women” to “women with an X in there” to “uterus havers” to “chest feeders,” to “menstruates” to the last one I saw was, “we’re non men now.”
Beverly Hallberg:
Hahaha,
Inga Thompson:
You know, if you can’t see the attack on women. And when I say that too, there, there are so many men that also stand behind us. And so I always feel kind of bad when I say the men are doing this to us because so many men back us up and support us. It it’s this small radical group that has taken over the dialogue of all of this and the way that they dox and they threatened and they slander and they cancel. They have very effectively silenced people. And I’m, what I’m really hoping is that the outrage of what happens to women’s opportunity in sports and, and hopefully the outrage of what’s happening with our children should get people up in arms enough to start speaking out because we are the 90%, the majority that see this unfairness.
Beverly Hallberg:
Well before, yeah. Before you go, I want to touch on one more thing and that is, you are a cancer survivor. Congratulations. That’s so exciting. And you’ve gone through a hard process, I’m sure we have listeners right now who have struggled with breast cancer, other types of cancers or have family members who have, what was that process like for you? I think when we think of athletes like you, we think you’re healthy and we know cancer can happen to anyone, but at the same time, you just don’t think about it with somebody who has competed on such a high level as you have. What was that process like for you because you’ve had such a healthy body and to go through that, obviously there’s pain, there’s weakness, etc.
Inga Thompson:
It’s beyond devastating. I’ve spent my whole life, you know, being organic, being healthy, and they talk about, you know, diet and exercise and I’m like, I did all of that. And I think the, the one mark against me is that women who have dense breasts need to be checked more often and not with just having a mammogram, there needs to be a change where women with dense breasts like me go straight to having mammograms. And what’s discouraging about this is that I think as much as I appreciate the cancer industry for helping me get through this, you also see that more emphasis needs to be put on early diagnosis. And that I think that women should be getting more checkups with this because it’s still the number one killer of women is cancer. And they have relaxed a lot, instead of having mammograms every year, now it’s every couple of years. And most of the women that I talk to fit the profile like I did, where we do not have cancer in our history. And yet all of these women that I have spoken to all have very, very dense breasts and are discouraged from having routine checkups because then you have to kind of jump through this other hoop of having an MRI. And I’m hoping to, once we get through this one, be more advocating for earlier detection of cancer in women.
Beverly Hallberg:
Yeah.
Inga Thompson:
But one rabbit hole at a time.
Beverly Hallberg:
And last final question for you. Tell us a little bit about your foundation. I know it’s a nonprofit. What does your foundation, the Inga Thompson Foundation, do?
Inga Thompson:
What I started off doing was, you see so many young women athletes and they’re not given the plane ticket to get to a race, you know, of the opportunity to get a bike. And so this has been a fundraising effort to give up and coming young women’s cyclists the money to get to these races. Sorry about that. I really thought that was turned off.
Beverly Hallberg:
That’s okay. Live conversations. It happens. Yeah.
Inga Thompson:
Uh, to get women to the races and to give them opportunities to give them, you know, like I said, an airplane ticket or to money to sign up to go to these different races. And then, because there’s so much promise out there with women at the grassroots, but cycling is tough to get into as far as getting a bike and the time that it takes to train and having access to somebody like me who’s been there and we’ve kind of, you know, gone through the gauntlet to give them advice. I mean, and it’s kind of morphed into, you know, women too that have saddle issues. And one of them was, I don’t want to get into these, but they really get into women issues of, what was the last one? Like menstruation.
We had a young woman that was removed from a team because of issues that run into only women menstruation and blood loss and iron loss. It’s difficult what women run into being a woman that a man never runs into. And I’m not saying better or worse, is just different. Like young women athletes run into menstruation issues. And when you’re in the luteal phase, you know, injury issues and what happens to your tendons and, and how the menstruation affects your performance, and these are women only issues, right? That a lot of these women don’t have a place to go. They don’t have a sounding board. They don’t know where to go when there’s abuse and bullying going on. And so it’s gone from being, I thought it would be more financial helping these women, and it’s turned out to be a lot more emotional help.
Beverly Hallberg:
Well, you were, yeah. You were helping women in so many ways, including just defending women and their ability to continue to compete on a fair level in sports. Inga Thompson, so appreciate all that you do and also for joining. She Thanks today. Thank you.
Inga Thompson:
Thank you so much for having me.
Beverly Hallberg:
And thank you all for being here. Before you go, IWF does want you to know that we rely on the generosity of supporters like you. And investment in IWF fuels our efforts to enhance freedom, opportunity, and wellbeing for all Americans. So please consider making a small donation to IWF by visiting iwf.org/donate. That’s iwf.org/donate. Last, if you enjoy this episode as she thinks, do leave us a rating or review. It does help and we love it if you share this episode so your friends can know where they can find more, She Thinks From all of us here at IWF, thanks for watching.
