A two-time Olympian has ripped rules that allowed a transgender runner to beat nearly 14,000 women in the female category of the London Marathon.
Mara Yamauchi — who finished sixth in the marathon at the 2008 Beijing Olympics — lashed out after trans racer Glenique Frank, 54, gushed to the BBC about using “girl power” to run the UK race on Sunday.
“Males in the [female] category is UNFAIR for females,” Yamauchi tweeted alongside a clip of the mid-race interview by the sports bra-wearing runner who also gushed about soon becoming “a gran.”
“Nearly 14,000 actual females suffered a worse finish position [because] of” Frank, wrote Yamauchi — who said that even when she was “ranked second in the world” as a woman, “at least 1300 men ran faster than me.”
The New York Post reports Yamauchi noted how UK Athletics applied World Athletics’ rules on the exclusion of transgender women from elite female competitions at the end of March to make it “fair for athletes who have gone through male puberty to be excluded from the female category in athletics.”
However, it allowed those who had already entered races to still compete in categories that were not their biological sex.
“This male competed under UK Athletics’ transitional arrangements, but it is still wrong and unfair,” Yamauchi told Telegraph Sport.
Cathy Devine, a former lecturer in sport and physical activity at the University of Cumbria, also accused the London Marathon of being “enabling.”
“Zero categories that exclude male performance advantage. Goddess forbid that female runners should have their own category celebrating what women runners can do,” she tweeted.
Frank told The Post Tuesday that she’s competed in the male category in previous marathons — including New York in November — because she was forced to enter under the name and gender that’s listed on her passport.
Even so, she ran around the Big Apple in a bright-red bra and wore a long pink wig as a city tourist.
For the London Marathon, however, the same passport rules did not apply because Frank is UK-based and a British citizen.
“I ticked female because I see myself as female,” said Frank, who came out three years ago as Glenique — a mix of Glen and “unique” — but has “known since I was five that I was in the wrong body.”
Frank said it was “traumatic” to be publicly attacked while “trying to spread joy and happiness with the rainbow love” at the race.
Still, “I get it,” Frank, a personal trainer, said of the criticism. “I feel sad that I’ve upset Mara, because I respect her.”
Frank went viral after stopping to tell the BBC of her joy at running her 17th marathon.
“Girl power!” Frank said, while flexing her bulging biceps above rainbow-coloured armbands.
The runner — whose social media still shows photos from earlier races while still a balding then-married man — ended the mid-race chat to gush about how her “beautiful son” is expecting a baby.
“So I’m going to be a gran — Granny G!” Frank said before running off, draped in a blue, pink and white transgender flag.
Frank said she was shocked at the blowback given that she was not an elite runner competing for prize money or a place on the podium. Instead, she’s raised the equivalent of $37,000 for charity in the races.
“I did [the race in] four hours 11 minutes. There’s lots of women that beat me,” she noted of the more than 6,150 ahead of her in the category.
Still, from now on Frank said she is “going to enter under ‘other’ or ‘male,’ just to keep everybody happy.
“And I’ll still do it in four hours and I won’t steal anybody’s money,” she quipped.
— This story originally appeared on nypost.com and has been republished with permission
