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Photo: Women's Elite Rugby
The season will kick off in March 2025 and will be a 15-side competition format (the more traditional style of the game, different from the 7v7 played in the Olympics). The goal is to grow the sport in the U.S., and to create a fan base and pathway for American players ahead of the 2033 Women's Rugby World Cup, which will be held in the U.S.
2. Alpine Ski World Championships start today ⛷️
From today through Feb. 16, the world championships will hit Austria to crown winners in the downhill, super-G, giant slalom, slalom, and team combined races, plus a mixed-gender team parallel event.
Two big stories:
- Mikaela Shiffrin was on the verge of a record 100th win at the end of November but had a very bad crash instead. Now, she's back and worked her way into a 10th place at her first return World Cup slalom last weekend. Can she get back to the top in time?
- Lindsey Vonn will attempt to become the oldest Alpine world medalist (male or female) at the age of 40. Her big goal? The Olympics next year + teaming up with Shiffrin in the new team event.
Meanwhile, at the Para World Championships there's not enough snow ❄️ ☹️
📺 WATCH: In the U.S., it'll air on Peacock — with highlights on NBC this Saturday and Sunday afternoon. In Canada, it'll air on CBC. And in Europe, the races will be shown on Eurosport & a combo of national broadcasters.
3. World Triathlon becomes latest sport to take a hard backtrack on trans women's participation
On the heels of Crossfit reversing its policy on trans women, World Triathlon (the governing body for triathlon) became the most recent sport to take a hard right turn on allowing trans women to compete in amateur or elite races. And, much like Crossfit's policy, triathlon's will also allow athletes to report other athletes they suspect of being trans.
The old policy (similar to many other sports' previous positions): Trans women could compete in the women’s category after their testosterone levels were maintained below certain limits for a certain amount of time — 2.5 nmol/L continuously for two years — and that they could not have competed in the men’s category in the previous four years.
The new policy: Effective retroactively to Jan. 1, amateur or age-group trans women can never compete in the women’s category. No matter if they’ve fully medically transitioned or when they transitioned, even if they did it before they hit puberty. World Tri has instead renamed the men’s category the “open” category and all amateur trans women must compete in the men’s open category.
The problem:
Since it’s in no way realistic to require medical records for all amateur athletes who do large mass participation events, World Triathlon has said they’ll enforce the policy if and when athletes report other athletes.
What that means is that triathletes are going to be turning in other triathletes who they “suspect” of being secretly trans for reasons like: looking too masculine, having too many muscles, being “too good.” Already we’ve had countless examples of this happening in other sports and locker rooms and gyms, of kids being harassed and booed by parents who “suspected” some 8-year-old was trans because they were too big or too much better than their own kid; we’ve had women, those who were and those who were not trans, accosted or attacked in bathrooms simply because they didn’t look feminine enough. This is a terrible precedent to set and one that hurts ALL WOMEN. This kind of social self-policing has never gone well, ever.
READ MORE: Our breakdown of the issues with these new policies |
