A transgender runner won the women's trophy in the prestigious New York Upstate Classic Half Marathon, beating the first woman across the finish line by six minutes and finishing fourth overall. The runner, who goes by Kae Luci Ravichandran, finished the course in 1 hour and 24 minutes. Amanda Aussems finished with a time of 1:30:39.
In 2021, for example, the fourth-place runner finished in 1:24, and the first-place woman finished in 1:37:59. So Ms. Aussems was not only denied a win, she may have been denied the women's course record.
This might have been any other women's sporting event where a man who isn't quite good enough to get on the medal stand decides to discover he's a she and compete against women. Then, in the words of former French President Jacques Chirac, Ravichandran ''missed a good opportunity to shut up.'' In a post-race social media comment. Ravichandran wrote, "Embarrassingly slow, gave up after mile 5 because my tendon was acting up. Very out of shape. I'll take the [win] tho[ugh."
It is difficult to take this as anything less than trolling. He finished literally a mile in front of the first woman and says he gave up at "mile 5." I'm not opposed to athletic peers trash-talking one another, but this had echoes of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer was taking karate lessons.
If he was looking for attention, he got it. Riley Gaines noticed.
Male runner, Kae Ravichandran, won women's category by 6 minutes at the Upstate Classic Half Marathon. Despite dominating, he said his time was "embarrassingly slow" due to being "very out of shape" & he "gave up after mile 5"
— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) November 26, 2023
He won Boston Marathon nonbinary category in April pic.twitter.com/qwjVwpg2jm
So did Olympic marathoner Mara Yamauchi.
Trans-identifying male Ravichandran smashes it in the F category, but moans about being “slow”. Female athletes are terrible, eh Kae? Sounds like Anne Andres.
— Mara Yamauchi (@mara_yamauchi) November 26, 2023
4th overall. He races in M, F & NB categories. RTed “f*** terfs”.
Congrats to the female winner, Amanda Aussems. 👏 https://t.co/986afU9I2C
Her tweet is the reason why I think Ravichandran was trolling the other women in the race and women like Riley and Mara, who are trying to save women's sports for women. "TERFs," or trans-exclusive radical feminists, is how a lot of the women opposing men in women's sports are described, even when they are not actual radical feminists.
When the heat grew too much, Ravichandran took to Instagram to snivel.
'This is so dumb, I ran a 71-minute half marathon pre-estrogen, less than two weeks after a marathon.
'For this totally fresh half, I ran 84 minutes. I've become way slower – like 18%, my body is physiologically a woman's body now.
'Yet they still don't want me competing. It's clear that they just don't want trans people in sports in general, and they actually don't care about biology.
'I need to remind myself that these people have nothing better to do with their lives and spend all their energy being bigots.
I also need to stop opening up stuff when I'm tagged, but morbid curiosity sometimes takes over me. Agh. Just feel like s***'.
News flash. Your body will always be physiologically a male's. Taking estrogen and undergoing surgical mutilation will never make you female.
Every movement has a spark. The saga of "Lia Thomas" taking medals from young women because he was a selfish and mediocre swimmer who guilted and bullied his way into women's swimming and their locker room, may have been that. But an incident like a transgender runner trolling his female competition could be that shot at Concord Bridge that sets off a revolution.
