A professional women’s pool tournament has been branded “preposterous” after the final was contested by two transgender players who had each beaten four female opponents. The Telegraph has more.
Harriet Haynes and Lucy Smith faced off in the Ultimate Pool Women’s Pro Series Event 2 at Robin Park Leisure Centre in Wigan, having each beaten four female-born opponents.
Broadcaster Piers Morgan labelled the event as “preposterous” before accusing the sport of “cheating bulls—” on social media. Former Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies went on to call it “bloody ridiculous and grossly wrong in every way”.
Replying to a post by Reduxx Magazine on X, which claimed “two men” were facing each other for a championship title, Morgan wrote: “Why anyone supports this cheating bulls— is utterly beyond me.”
Haynes won the competition, her path to the title including victories over Megan Proctor and Mary Talbot, while Smith reached the final by knocking out Kirsty-Lee Davies and Danielle Randle along the way.
The latest controversy comes almost a year-and-a-half after Lynne Pinches forfeited the 2023 Women’s Champion of Champions final in protest at the participation of Haynes, who was awarded the title (see video below).
Pinches later told TalkTV: “Whenever you play a transgender player, even if you win, it doesn’t make any difference because, in your heart, you know it’s unfair.
“This is a category advantage. Being biologically male and playing against females gives you a clear category advantage.
“Every time I play a transgender player, I think about it before, during and after the match, about how unfair it is and how this is a level I can’t reach.
“I watch some of the shots they play, and I think females don’t play these shots down the rails like this and they don’t clear up like this. They [trans women] have a longer reach and a lot of them are taller than us.
“Women have been silenced because of fear of being transphobic. That is why people don’t speak out about this subject. It’s not a gender issue. This is a fairness issue.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Women’s disc golfer Abigail Wilson has walked off the course in protest at being forced to play a transgender opponent. Wilson pretended to take her opening shot in a match against Natalie Ryan before turning around and shouting: “Females must be protected in our division. This is unfair. I refuse to play.”
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Anyone know who’s contesting the Ladies Topless Darts Final in Roehampton? One to watch!
One for fans of hairy chests…
Presumably any single dart score of 40 is an immediate disqualification?
I wish the title of this piece was “Two men compete in Women’s pool final”. Call a spade a spade.
Toby Young has been endlessly reluctant to call a dude a dude – that’s how you get knighted I guess, being somewhat compliant. Same with CV19, everything to his mind is just coincidence and error.
Of course there are lots of women now pretending to be men playing in male sports aren’t there….surely…..somebody…..somewhere?
A bit like the FtM prisoners in men’s prisons and FtM trans people growing beards in order to infiltrate men’s changing rooms so they can perv at the blokes, if you deny these aren’t actually happening it’s because of “media distortion”, according to one poster on here. Some pretty impressive distortion, then, as I’ve yet to read a single report. Anyone would think the whole thing is totally one-sided because it is actually all happening from the one side.
Before the Fall of the Berlin Wall, East German women athletes taking performance-enhancing hormones was a festering scandal in sport.
Four decades later, sports administrators pander to men in drag, naturally endowed with performance-enhancing testosterone. Level playing fields disallowed.
Strange times we live in.
I don’t know what was stopping them playing in the men’s division, other than their own fantasy that they’re women, because surely the usual physicality necessary in proper athletic sports isn’t at the fore in pool, which is more skill’s based than speed, strength and endurance. As a comparison, we know that the other male impostors competing against women in running, swimming, cycling, weight-lifting events, have all been mediocre athletes ranked way down the list in men’s sports. I believe that ‘Lia’ Thomas was ranked 400 odd in men’s swimming, he self-identifies as female then magically shoots to rank number 1 in the women’s category. Anyway, some advantages men have over women at pool, which aren’t always immediately obvious to many;
”1) Spatial processing – men are shown to be better
2) Longer arms proportional to their bodies – better reach
3) 40-75% higher upper body strength – more powerful break shots and better control of hitting the ball.”
https://x.com/zanier84018321/status/1909012762845675781
Is pool (or darts for that matter) a game/sport where being male confers an advantage? I would have thought accuracy is more important than power or size. Does it really need separate women’s and a men’s competitions?
2 men played off against each other to be awarded a once females title. So it wasn’t a women’s tournament at all, it was a mixed sex competition and should have been titled as such. Women are once again losers to Men who decide and who know that by putting on a frock or just by saying the words, they can be better women than the real ones.
These women lose out on the prize money and the chance of sponsorship. In America, they lose out on free or subsidised College spaces. It has to be stopped and an Open category added to the end of the male and female competitions for the trans to pay for and arrange. If they had to cough up the funds it will all end v quickly.
While I get the bigger stronger, faster bit in boxing, tennis athletics generally it is less clear to me what advantages a male puberty brings to the pool table.
Still think it’s ridiculous of course.
It is puzzling but women have generally failed to make a breakthrough in male dominated snooker. And so what is it? height, reach, controlled power, game strategy? who knows. But it goes to show that once you have gone through puberty there are a whole host of differences that, whether you can quantify them or not, give a huge difference to those who go through puberty as a male compared to those who go through puberty as a female.
In most sorts of sports, including pool and snooker, if you have gone through puberty as a male you will be at a huge advantage over those who have gone through puberty as a female. That is why we established men’s and women’s sports in the first place. To deny this is insidious insanity.
I find this wholly disgusting. These two are blokes, men, males and the only way they are able to win a trophy is pretending to be a female.
My friend here in Thailand collates the scores for the local pool league. Each season a trophy is given to the highest scoring male and female players. The ladyboys don’t get a look in at these trophys but you don’t hear them complaining.
Which in my opinion is as it should be.
In the past week one golfer and one fencer have refused to play against a male opponent.
I admire them.
I keep saying, we need the whole field to walk off and then this would stop really quickly.
Don’t watch this, don’t participate.