On January 8, University of Pennsylvania women’s swim team member Lia Thomas, a biological male who has engendered outrage by competing against and crushing women swimmers in competitions, swam a race in which Thomas’ time was suspiciously slower than previous times, permitting Iszac Henig, a Yale swimmer who is biologically female but identifies as male, to win.
That prompted a young woman who is on Penn’s swim team with Thomas to surmise in an interview with Outkick that Thomas and Henig colluded before the race in order for Henig to win and thus disprove the assumption that Thomas, as a biological male, could not be beaten by a biological female competitor.
The swimmer, who preferred to remain anonymous out of fear from activists, told Outkick, “Looking at [Lia’s] time, I don’t think she was trying. I know they’re friends and I know they were talking before the meet. I think she let her win to prove the point that, ‘Oh see, a female-to-male beat me.’” Asked if she thought Thomas and Henig had colluded, she replied, “I do. I can’t say for sure, but I wouldn’t be shocked if I found out that was 100% true.”
Outkick noted, “In the 100 freestyle race, Henig finished with a time of 49.57; Thomas touched the wall in 52.84. During a November tri-meet with Princeton and Cornell, Thomas swam the 100 freestyle in 49.42.”
Thomas’ teammate also noted that in the January 8 200 freestyle race, Thomas only won by two seconds. She stated, “I was on deck and said to a friend, ‘She’s literally not trying.’ You could just tell. It was blatantly obvious. I was watching the 200 free and she was literally keeping pace with the other girls.”
“She was No. 1 in the country at one point,” she continued. “These are definitely talented swimmers, but they’re not the caliber of being at the top in the country or anything like that. … You can tell when someone is dying and they’re swimming slow. You can also tell when someone is not trying and I could see [in the 200 freestyle] that Lia was not trying.”
The Daily Wire reported on January 8, “According to parents who asked to remain anonymous, Thomas seemed to be ‘coasting’ and ‘barely trying’ while winning the first of four races by just two seconds. The races were close despite the fact that Thomas shattered two women’s records with a 38-second margin against the next closest competitor earlier this season. The freestyle race was also much closer for the victorious Penn swimmer than in previous races.”
In early December, Thomas utterly crushed the women competing with Thomas at the University of Akron’s Zippy Invitational, winning the 1650 free by a gargantuan 38 seconds ahead of the young woman finishing second, winning the 500 free by a whopping twelve seconds ahead of the woman finishing second, and winning the 200 free by a still-huge seven seconds, setting new Penn records along with meet and pool records.
Video surfaced of Thomas winning the 1650 free, showing how lopsided the race was with Thomas, who swam competitively for the men’s team for three years before switching to the women’s team, leaving female swimmers looking as if they were not even in the same race.
Just to show you how absurd this is. Here’s the trans swimmer “Lia” Thomas crushing all of the female competitors by 40 seconds. This is what that looks like in real time. A total farce.
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) December 15, 2021
A member of the University of Pennsylvania’s swim team told Outkick that Thomas bragged after winning the 200 freestyle at the University of Akron Zippy Invitational, “That was so easy, I was cruising,” and after winning the 500 freestyle but disappointed with the time, boasted, “At least I’m still No. 1 in the country” in front of teammates.
The teammate said her fellow women teammates were crying on the Akron pool deck because they knew they had no chance of winning with Thomas competing. She said, “They feel so discouraged because no matter how much work they put in it, they’re going to lose. Usually, they can get behind the blocks and know they out-trained all their competitors and they’re going to win and give it all they’ve got. Now they’re having to go behind the blocks knowing no matter what, they do not have the chance to win. I think that it’s really getting to everyone.”