Holly shrugged: Why Holly Lavesser left cyclocross
All those things that never happen to female athletes keep happening to cyclist Holly Lavesser. So she did the thing that female athletes supposedly never do: she left.
Over the last 60 years, a succession of female athletes cleared the path for women at the top of their sports, prompting the growth of athletic development pathways for girls, establishing the female category in sports. Today, one female athlete is making way for mediocre men to reach the top of her former sport, in the hope that it will help restore and protect the female category.
That's part of Holly Lavesser's motivation for leaving cyclocross racing. The other is selfish, in a reductio ad absurdum kind of way: "I have no interest in racing men."
When she has raced against men - always in the female category - Lavesser has finished both above and below them on the results page. But her ability is beside the point. Even when Lavesser stands above trans-identifying males on the medal stand, she can't evade the multiple injustices of the situation. For starters, someone who shouldn't be on the podium is: the male. And someone who should be on the podium isn't: a female, feeling dejected, deficient, or, if she knew the truth about her opponents, shafted.
Not that it would matter if the man wasn't on the podium, or if he finished the race DFL. "I don't like to show up to a line where I know there's a male," Lavesser says. "That puts additional stress and frustration on me when I should be focused on the race itself and what I need to do."
“If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - what would you tell him to do?"
“I… don't know. What… could he do? What would you tell him?"
“To shrug.”
Part of the stress and frustration is the implicit intimidation for Lavesser and the other female athletes to play their part as the Stepford handmaidens of gender ideology.
When she should be thinking only about the race ahead to give herself the best chance of reaching the podium, the presence of male athletes forces Lavesser to think too many what if's ahead.
"Will I show up to the podium if they're there? If they don't make the podium, will I still go to the podium? If I don't go, will anybody know that the reason I'm not there is because I don't support that they're allowing this? Or will they just think, oh, she drove home to get home."
For a fleeting moment in American sports history, taking a knee was edgy. In cycling, not raising your hands on a female category mixed sex podium is asking for it.
Lavesser opted out of the traditional double-arm raise on a podium once. Soon, the discounts and free bike labor that she normally received as a member of a local bike shop's elite racing team dried up. The manager told her that the team and store could no longer afford those perks, yet her teammates continued to enjoy them. The manager contradicted himself by emailing the entire team that the organization unreservedly supports trans athletes competing and that all team members are expected to publicly do the same. "This is not meant to single out anyone," he wrote. But everyone knew that only one team member refused to wear the ribbon raise her arms next to a man raising his.
Several male team members replied-all, enthusiastically supporting the policy. Lavesser quietly departed from the team.
Lavesser knew she could make a similarly quiet exit from cyclocross, whereas nothing would remain quiet if she stayed.
Among those present at Lavesser's last USA Cycling Cyclocross National Championships were members of three chapters of the John Brown Gun Club, two of which describe themselves as "anti-fascist," "anti-racist," "pro-worker," and, helpfully, - just in case you were wondering or unclear - "not a militia." They showed up with "more than radios" to provide a "secret community defense" at the behest of a "source we won't name," but who is widely believed from his boast-before-backpedal to be Adam Myerson. Myerson was and still is the at-large representative on USA Cycling's Cyclocross Committee, and is also a cycling coach.
The JBGCs' presence at the 2022 championships was in response to protestors at the 2021 edition holding signs saying "Save Women's Sports."
Within days of the 2021 event, a USA Cycling official, Flynn Leonard, posted an open letter demanding USA Cycling's board fire CEO Rob DiMartini and Executive Director of Athlete Health & Wellness Kelsey Erickson; and to suspend any athletes and members who participated in the sign holding. Leonard's grammatical train wreck (it never ends with just the pronouns) justified these demands by denouncing USA Cycling's "lack of response [and] implicit allowance" of the "anti-transgender hate group," "transphobic behavior online," "hate group" (again) on a "mission of exclusion against members and communities who are marginalized, ignored, deliberately excluded, and made to feel unwelcome... yet still are getting shunned, made to feel unwelcome (NB: again), and argued to be unfair and breaking the rules."
Despite its literary deficiencies, Leonard's letter, backed by 25 signatories in the first day, was at least partly successful. DiMartini resigned within a week.
Post-coup, USA Cycling promulgated a new fan code of conduct. This rule prohibits "Displaying signs, symbols, images, using language, or making gestures that are threatening, abusive, or discriminatory on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, gender identity, ability, or sexual orientation." And, if that's not sufficiently broad or vague, fans can be ejected for "[b]ehavior that is unruly [or] disruptive" or for "[f]ailure to comply with event or venue rules." If those fans are also members of USA Cycling, they can be sanctioned or suspended from the organization.
“I am the man who has deprived you of victims and thus has destroyed your world.”
Unlike most athletes, Lavesser has a refuge from USA Cycling's refusal to protect both the female category and those trying to protect the female category.
Lavesser has a professional license in mountain biking, so she is eligible to compete in races that operate under the rules of the international cycling federation, Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI). UCI prohibits males in the female category, and as the international governing body, their rules trump national federations'.
However, UCI's rules only apply to the professional level races, so in the US, the lower tier races remain under the manly jurisdiction of USA Cycling.
Sorry, ladies.
"What's sad is that most women will never make it to the pro level where they could compete in a protected category at a UCI race," Lavesser says.
The two-tiered policy defines a protection racket rather than a protected category.
Lavesser's husband and coach, Jess Kruchoski, says "A lot of people have asked, 'why don't Kate Courtney, Haley Batten and the big names in US mountain biking speak up?' UCI put them in a position where speaking up only is going to hurt them. They're protected in their class. They don't have to speak up, and if they do, all this is going to rain down. Look at what happened to Chloe Dygert when she liked a tweet that pointed out that it was unfair. She was sent to DEI training and it went down from there. So there's a lot to lose if you speak up and nothing to gain because they already have the protection the other women want."
The asymmetries in the game theory go all the way down. While Lavesser's fellow professionals have nothing to gain and everything to lose, mediocre men and women within the non-professional categories have everything to gain by the pressured withdrawal or forced removal of people like Lavesser.
Of the top five women at the (problematically gender critical) 2021 USA Cycling Cyclocross National Championships for the Masters women's 40-44 age group, three returned for the next year's edition. None competed in the 2023 championships; and only one of the top five women from the 2022 race competed in the 2023 race. And before you try the lazy gotcha, no, they did not just age into the 45-49 category.
Other than the John Brown Gun Club glitterati ("Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln...."), did anything else happen in 2022 that could sway these athletes' decisions?
Erin Feldhausen and Holly Lavesser were 1-2 in 2021, and 2-3 in 2022. In first place was Jenna Lingwood, i.e., Jimmy Lingwood.
The top five women in 2023 had only one athlete with a top five age group finish in the previous two years. Those riders who competed in the previous two years all improved on their placing, but was that due to improvement or a decline in the quality of the competition?
Kruchoski notes that the winner of the 2023 Masters women's 40-44 race is coached by Adam Myerson, and was in a position to know that Lavesser, Feldhausen and Lingwood were not racing. Myerson himself rounds out the picture:
Swap out Hanlon's razor for Kruchoski's, and never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incentives.
"I can't say without a doubt that anyone took advantage of the situation, but it does make you realize that there are people who are benefiting greatly: mediocre athletes. I think there's this draw as a competitor where you recognize you can get the trophy if you get in a race where the best athletes are not there." Similarly, the men who would otherwise finish behind these male defectors move up a few slots themselves.
Kruchoski's razor dulls (or sharpens, depending on how you look at it) when applied to coaches instead of athletes.
"Adam Myerson coached Jenna Lingwood, Austin Killips, and several other transgender athletes. If you're a coach and you create a niche with the type of people you coach, you guarantee yourself a base."
Anyone can respond to incentives, but certain advantages follow those who create them.
More than in other situations, boycotts have to be total in sport. Otherwise, what is unseen loses out to what is seen.
"Women like Holly choose not to participate, but nobody notices. They just see a person on the podium raising their arms, and they shrug and think 'Oh, that person won.'"
So will Lavesser's protest remain invisible until the boycott of women's sports by women - or at least a single category in a sub-discipline of a niche sport - is total?
"The best thing that can happen is to have a male enter and just annihilate the women," Lavesser says. "I was actually feeling hopeful when Austin Killips was doing so well, thinking this is what's going to end it. And it kind of did internationally, but it needs to happen now domestically and at every level.
"If suddenly you see Kylie" - until recently, Kyle - "Small beating Kate Courtney and some of the darlings of US women's mountain biking, you'll see [bicycle part manufacturer] SRAM get very nervous. Right now, SRAM is all in with supporting this, because they're looking to sell bikes to the middle level via the pro cyclists they sponsor. If those pros start losing to men, it's going to make a dent. It's what happened in swimming. When World Aquatics saw that Lia Thomas was pressing Katie Ledecky's records, they saw the optics getting really bad and they stepped in to make a change."
“Isn’t it odd? When a politician or move star retires, we read front page stories about it. But when a philosopher retires, people do not even notice it.”
“They do, eventually.”
The degradation and eventual loss of talent is the common thread linking my two current rabbit holes of obsession: gender ideology in sports, and cancellation. Whether it's a podium, roster spot, the bottom third of a race's results, or the C-suite of a nine-figure company, remove one, two or ten people, and one, two or ten people will move up. Not because of their merit or ability, but because there's space to fill.
"If you went into somebody's house, grabbed a vase and walked out, it would take them a week or two to realize it. Or you go to your closet and say, 'where did I lose that shirt?' Only when you go looking for it do you notice it's gone. That's what's happening in the women's field in these races: unless you're looking for a specific athlete, you don't know who or how many aren't there."
Men dominating women's sports is much easier to see than women opting out of women's sports. South Park knew it. Holly Lavesser knows it. It feels wrong to cheer for it, but it might be the quickest way out.
The proponents of trans ideology are being aggressive; the opponents aren’t. The results are predictable.
There’s no way around it. We have to speak up, strongly and loudly, and preferably in coordination with each other.
All women, united, should refuse to compete against men. Period. It enables the fantasy and contributes to the erasure of women in women's sports. Women are being used as validation props only. You halt this by refusing, en masse, to compete against men.