Earlier this week I was reading a wild interview in the Economist with Argentinian president Javier Milei. While the magazine headline was formed from the quote “my contempt for the state is infinite” there was one line of the interview that stuck out to me from my swimming perch.
While Milei railed against what he described as “cultural Marxism”, he dropped in the following line:
“I don’t think positive discrimination is right. Then the quota problems appear, a lot of problems appear. And there are these ridiculous things we find in sports, where men appear beating women in a boxing tournament. Or men beating women in swimming, or in any sport you want”
Now he doesn’t outright mention Lia by name, but I can’t help but guess that it is Lia he is referring to in the final sentence. At that moment it struck me. Lia Thomas is perhaps one of the most transcendent athletes in the sport of swimming, whether you like it or not. A large part of that transcendence says something about what causes our sport to break through and whether we truly want that.
In this blog, I’m not going to go on about the obvious misgendering or what is right and wrong in terms of transgender participation in sports. More, I want to examine why Lia competing in one collegiate season is something that seems to have penetrated into the political philosophy of a leader who’s probably never watched a swim meet.
Fox news Discovers College Swimming
Let’s wind back to when Lia was actually competing. It was by far the most media attention the women’s NCAA Championship has ever gotten. The erstwhile cable news titan, Fox News, was giving breathless coverage of the medal presentations at the meet.
So pervasive was the coverage that at least one swimmer, Riley Gaines, has been able to launch a media career off of one of those medal ceremonies.
It was obvious to anyone that was watching that the attention was not out of some genuine font of interest in the sport of swimming. Swimming was not becoming popular. Our sport, that for the most part putters along without generating much emotion from people, had brought out everyone’s sharpest elbows.
Swimmers are polite. Swimmers are sportsmanlike. Swimmers at the elite level often live a monk like existence, where if you count the amount of hours they dedicate to recovering from training plus the actual training, they have little time to cause trouble.
If they reach they pinnacle, they make “aww shucks” faces while they’re being interviewed poolside with a medal on their neck. They do not, under almost any circumstances, cause trouble. Before Lia Thomas the angriest I’d ever seen people about an American swimmer was when Gary Hall Jr said his teammate was a “good relay swimmer”.
Backhanded compliments at most generate a raised eyebrow. Lia Thomas was doing more than raising eyebrows. People reacted instinctively to a 6’4, long limbed athlete who had only years before competed in men’s swimming and thought to themselves:
“This is not fair”.
That explanation, in my line of work, is always the one people draw upon when they are angry. And people were very, very angry about Lia. They found her provocative in a way that some weak trash talk could never match.
We all know too well that social media algorithms feed off anger. Anger can easily overwhelm your cognitive process and keep you doom scrolling. And so it was that the more the anger picked up steam, the more attention the came, and it became a self-sustaining loop.
That is, until Lia’s further participation in women’s swimming was snuffed out by rule’s changes.
The sport we want
I used to be a fan of pro sports. Sometimes, I’m sad that I let it go. It’s partially a byproduct of moving to Denmark and being virtually unable to watch games for four years. The habit just fell away and I didn’t try to rebuild it.
But I can remember the absolute roller coaster ride of “big time” sports. I can remember sitting alone in my Philadelphia apartment when David Tyree inexplicably caught a pass and ruined my beloved Patriots perfect season. I can tell you for certain I was angry.
This past weekend the Ohio State-Michigan football game descended into a brawl. Such is the passion that comes with the “big time”.
So I ask the question, is this what we want for the sport of swimming? I have lived long enough to hear a constant drumbeat of how we need to professionalize swimming. Kyle Sockwell is doing a tour trying to prop up interest in collegiate dual meets.
We’re trying to hype up, to gather attention. The greatest weapon is to make the results of swim meets feel as important as the Super Bowl. And, call me a hater if you will, but sometimes I question the wisdom in my previous life treating the outcome of the Super Bowl as so vitally important. It had no actual bearing on my life.
Many people espouse that what truly matters in sports is the journey. That the growth, discipline, and teamwork are what we truly get from sports. But how many of us put our money where our mouth is, and actually materially support where our heart is.
If Lia Thomas can garner as much, if not more attention than some of the greatest athletes in our sport for competing in college swimming, then we have to consider what it will truly mean for us evolve our sport. People focus on the gains, but I worry that something will be lost too.