Sharron Davies

Sharron Davies in 1983

Sharron Elizabeth Davies, MBE (born 1 November 1962) is an English former competitive swimmer who represented Great Britain in the Olympics and European championships and competed for England in the Commonwealth Games when she won two gold medals. Davies has attended 13 consecutive Olympic Games, competing in three games and later worked as a presenter of BBC Sport's coverage of swimming.

In 2005, Davies supported the ultimately successful British Olympic bid by profile-raising and appearing as spokesperson on BBC's Question Time where she argued in favour of bringing the games to London for 2012. Davies is a current patron of the Disabled Sport England and SportsAid. She was also the face of the Swim for Life charity event which raised total over £10m for charity. She has been critic of biological males (as transwomen) being able to compete in sports with biological women.

Quotes

2019–2020

• We need to come up with something that works for everybody and everybody agrees with, rather than having all sorts of diverse rules.
  We need to come up with a unified set of rules that is clear, concise and fair.
• [Posts on Twitter dated 1 March 2019] I believe there is a fundamental difference between the binary sex you are born with and the gender you may identify as.
  To protect women's sport, those with a male sex advantage should not be able to compete in women's sport.
  • Comments cited in "Sharron Davies: Former British swimmer says transgender athletes should not compete in women's sport", BBC Sport (2 March 2019)

• [On transwomen participating in women's sport] It has the potential to ruin women's sport. It’s not anything to do with saying sport isn't for everybody, it's asking how we classify it. And rather than classifying it by gender, we have to classify it by sex. And if the transgender society aren't happy with that, we’ll have to talk to governing bodies about an alternative, a transgender games. ... But how can this be fair to women?
  • "Sharron Davies on the transgender sports row: ‘How can this be fair to women?’", The Telegraph (10 March 2019)

• I do swim on holiday but my poor overworked shoulders don't much enjoy rotations.
  • Cited in Katie Binns "Sharron Davies: swimming brought me kudos but no cash", The Times (London, 1 March 2020)

2023–2024

• It's a total lie to say there is no evidence, not to mention every Olympic final ever, that definitely shows us the difference in elite performance.
• In the USA 14/15-year-old age group boys run faster, jump higher, throw further than every female Olympic champion ever and also if that was the case we wouldn't have separate male and female races at all. So a ridiculous ignorant statement. In things like rugby its not allowed to have mixed teams after 11 as it’s deemed too dangerous.
• Males hit 160 per cent harder than females of equal weight, contact sports are a serious life-threatening accident waiting to happen, and when it happens I hope they sue the people responsible.
  • At the health committee of the Scottish parliament, as cited in "Sharron Davies challenges trans athletes claims", The Times (25 May 2023)
  • Davies was disagreeing with the evidence of Leap Sport Scotland's Heidi Vistisen, whose organisation campaigns for the participation of LGBTI athletes. Vistisen had said "I don’t believe that there’s any evidence" for unfairness when biological males participate in women's sports.

• Men have 30-60 per cent more muscle strength and testosterone suppressants only reduce that by a maximum of nine per cent. They are stronger, faster and have superior endurance; what is fair about allowing them to compete against women?
• Men just don’t get cancelled in the same way as women; even if they say precisely the same thing. They might get a bit of stick on social media for a day or two but it peters away.
  It's women that the transgender militants target – because [trans women] were born male I think some of them see us as a soft touch and they expect us to give up our hard-fought rights and make room for them. Like many aggressive men, they refuse to take 'no' for an answer.
  • Interviewed by Judith Woods, as cited in "Sharron Davies: ‘I lost the vast majority of work the moment I put my head above the parapet’", The Telegraph (15 July 2023)

• Every sport, at every level, from grassroots to elite, must ensure that the female category is ring-fenced for biological females.
• [In the foreword to a Policy Exchange report] Mediocre male athletes are self-identifying their way onto women’s podiums, stealing their medals and opportunities.
  There is a sense within sports policy that while we should protect the female category within elite sports, women and girls participating and competing at amateur levels should budge over.
  They must 'be kind' and 'inclusive' while having to pretend that it is not grossly unfair, demotivating and possibly unsafe to accommodate biological males within their races, teams and sports days.
  • As cited by Geraldine Scott in "Sharron Davies: Mediocre trans athletes steal medals from women", The Times (London, 29 December 2023)

• [On the abolished sport sex verification DNA test] I have a little card from '76 that was a sex screen, and it was so simple, just a little swab to the inside of your mouth once in a lifetime because humans cannot change their biological sex.
• We have such a small piece of the cake, [according to Davies, 98 per cent of sport's sponsorship money goes to men] and now we're supposed to move over for what in most cases is mediocre male athletes who are identifying as females who just think that they have the right to take our opportunities away.
  • As cited in "Sharron Davies and Caitlyn Jenner tackle sport’s greatest debate: trans athletes", The Telegraph (15 March 2024)
  • Caitlyn Jenner, who competed in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal with Daley Thompson, was known as Bruce Jenner until 2015.

• You'd like to think that there ought to be [a route to legal challenge], from a duty of care perspective.
  It is the job of any organisation, whether that is a school or a sports club or a governing body, or, in fact, a world governing body like the IOC, to have a responsibility to safety.
  At the moment they are definitely negligent in this area when it comes to female athletes. They are not considering the damage, the potential damage, of putting a male athlete in with a female athlete. So if I was one of those female athletes, I would be trying to pursue this for sure.
  The problem we've got is that these female athletes are very young. They are very intimidated. They are very silenced. And the IOC puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the government and the national associations to make their athletes sign documentation which stops them, which takes away their voices. And that is also a problem that we have.
• The reason I speak out is, for 20 years, they allowed the East German state to dope young women, 11, 12, 13 years old, full of testosterone. Every single person in the track, in the swimming pool, at the rowing venue, knew exactly what was going on. The IOC did nothing.
  For 20 years they allowed female athletes to be cheated out of their medals and they allowed these young East German girls to be poisoned, to the state that all of them have health issues, and many of them have died. The history of the IOC defending female athletes is atrocious.
  • In a panel discussion organised by the Sex Matters advocacy group, as cited in "Sharron Davies encourages Khelif and Lin’s opponents to challenge defeats", The Guardian (8 August 2024)
  • On the controversy concerning the participation of Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting in Women's Welterweight Boxing at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

See also

• Maya Forstater, a founding officer of Sex Matters