After the apparent failure of a newly-formed transgender athlete category, one former NCAA swimmer explained why the designation won’t satisfy those specific competitors.
"They don't want a third category. That's not going to satisfy what they're looking for," University of Kentucky alum Kaitlynn Wheeler said on "Varney & Co.," Thursday. "Men want to invade women's sports. They're racing women and destroying women's sports. Having a third category isn't going to solve anything at all."
Wheeler’s commentary comes just one day after an "open category" swimming event to accommodate transgender athletes was canceled in Germany due to a lack of interest and entries.
World Aquatics, formerly known as FINA, announced in July that the Berlin Swimming World Cup would be the first competition to have an "open category" for all swimmers. The event announcement followed backlash from LGBTQ+ activists for its "gender inclusion policy" established in 2022 that only permitted trans-women swimmers who began transitioning before age 12 to compete in women’s categories.
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Days before it was set to begin on Oct. 6, the open category event was dropped with the organization citing "zero" entries.
"Of course they failed to get entries in for the meet. What man wouldn't want to compete against other men, when they compete in the women's sports and dominate?" Wheeler posited.
"Men have larger heart muscles, they have higher bone density, they have higher testosterone levels," she continued, "giving them an advantage."
The former NCAA swimmer pointed out a recent case study regarding a 16-year-old transgender student-athlete from Maine who was ranked 172nd in the men’s division before transitioning to female categories, where the individual is now ranked fourth in the state.
"This just shows that there is an unfair advantage here. They're not here to make it fair. They're here to dominate," Wheeler said.
Wheeler, an ambassador for the Riley Gaines Center at the Leadership Institute, offered a solution by arguing for "what we've always been doing" - having two divisions for men and women.
"We're doing the opposite of standing up for truth as we're affirming fantasies and not standing up for what's right anymore. We should have men's and women's sports," Wheeler explained. "We've always had them, and we've always had them for a reason, ever since Title IX was in place."
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Despite the lack of public interest, World Aquatics said it would continue to work on providing open-category events in the future.
"The World Aquatics Open Category Working Group will continue its work and engagement with the aquatics community on Open Category events. Even if there is no current demand at the elite level, the working group is planning to look at the possibility of including Open Category races at Masters events in the future," the organization said in a statement.
Fox News’ Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report.
