Fairness in Sport with Sharron Davies

Foreign.

I'm Charlie Redding. And I'm Claire Fudge, and this is the tribeathlon podcast.

But I genuinely believe that female athletes deserve the same opportunity that males get. And when we spend millions of pounds trying to stop anyone from cheating and having the tiniest advantage, to say that a female athlete is supposed to line up next to someone that has a massive advantage because of their biology is just not fair.

That was Sharon Davies, and this episode is Fairness in Sport. Hello, my name is Charlie Redding. Welcome to series four of the tribeathlon Podcast, the podcast that tries to get under the skin of the most successful runners, swimmers, cyclists, triathletes and people from the kind of periphery of those sports to try and learn what we can, you know, take what we can learn from their success and apply it to our everyday sport. So we've got some amazing guests lined up for series four. I've also got Claire Fudge joining me for both some of the interviews and also the the outros to kind of pick out the best learning points from that. So that's clarified your fourth discipline and nutrition specialist. So we've got an amazing series of interviews lined up for you. I just wanted to explain a slight structural change to the podcast for series four. So because the interviews have always been the highlight, the main feature of these podcasts, we want to dive straight into those interviews going forward. So we're going to go straight into each interview in future episodes and then Claire and I will catch up afterwards, both to talk about the interview and our learning points and takeaways from that, but also to catch up on kind of developments in the nutrition world and also how Claire and I's training and racing and all that sort of craziness gets on. So for now, I want to dive straight into the first interview of this series, which is with the amazing Sharon Davies. Sharon Davies, MBE, She's a former English competitive swimmer who represented Great Britain in the Olympics and the European Championships, as well as England in the Commonwealth Games. And Sharon has attended 12 consecutive Olympic Games, competing in three of them and then working in the media for BBC Sport. And she picked up, along her journey a silver Olympic medal, two gold and two bronze medals at Commonwealth Games and two bronze medals at the European Championships. And in addition to working for BBC Sport, she's also, like, a show that has a lot of great memories for me. She was a gladiator and she was on Breakfast tv, a presenter on Breakfast tv. But in recent years, Sharon has received a lot of coverage for being outspoken on the discussion around transgender in sport. So Claire and I wanted to really chat to her about fairness in sport, about both in relation to drugs, which is where she became so passionate on these subjects from her days of competing against drug fueled athletes and also fairness with gender. We wanted to chat to her about the science behind the transgender discussion and also the abuse that she's received for speaking out about what she believes in. So I know you're gonna absolutely love this fascinating and really detailed and brilliant interview with Sharon David. 33 fuel produce award winning natural sports nutrition and everything they do is led by their fuel loss of performance health and for a fitter future. 33 Fuel's awesome products have been fuelling triathletes since 2012, as well as many of the world's best athletes from other sports like the England football team, Tour de France winners and triathlon world champs, including four times Ironman world champ Chrissie Wellington, who's been using 33 fuel for years. I personally love their price. I particularly love their protein shake. I think it's delicious but it's also not full of a load of junk. I love their meal replacement which is kind of brilliant for pre or post workout recovery. I love their Chia gels. Actually they work really well for me, but especially I love their energy bars and their protein bars. They feel like a proper treat to eat as well as being packed full of real amazing goodness. So finally more about 33 fuel.com and if you use the code Tribeathlon or click the link in the show notes, you'll get a very extra special discount on your order. So Sharon Davis, welcome to the Tribe Athlone podcast. Really looking forward to chatting to you. I know we've got loads to chat about and obviously Claire's here joining us as well. So to kick things off, I always like to start with a story. So can you tell us a little bit about how you got into swimming and your progression from that point up to your first Olympics?

So first Olympics was at 13, so obviously you know, quite early doors really. Yeah, I learned to swim like every other kid. You know, that was mom and dad wanted me to be able to swim because it's a really important skill for us to have. It's important for safety that kids can swim. It wasn't part of Ofsted in those days and part of, you know what was expected at school, the national curriculum. In fact, I helped put that on the national curriculum when I, when I retired the first time around. But we lived in Plymouth by the sea. We were always in the water and so I was swimming. I Suppose by the time I was about 2 or 3, I wasn't a 6 month old baby, you know, going down the pool, which sometimes people think that must have been what happened. But what happened was I progressed very quickly. So I did ballet and I rode ponies and I do all the other things that little young girls do and eventually swimming just took over. You know, I'm the perfect shape for a swimmer. You know, I've got a long body, big paddles, you know, it's, it's, yeah, absolutely. I float really well. You know, these are all things which help you to be a swimmer. And as you know, with every sport really it's all physics, you know, and at the end of the day, swimmers all look pretty similar. We're all, we're a tall breed, you know, this is the same as a gymnast is likely to be a short breed, you know, it's what, it's the tools that you need to do the job that you're doing.

So and so how did that progress, you know, what point did you start taking swimming really seriously?

I think probably 9, 10. I was swimming, I was Devon county champion at 10, senior champion and I had my first Junior International at 11, which was in Cheltenham, I think West Germany versus Holland and Great Britain. And then I was at the Olympic Games at 13 and I remember having this sort of eureka moment watching Mark spitz win his seven gold medals at the 1972 Olympic Games with his handlebar mustache and his big row of medals. And I was probably 8 or 9 years old, but it is a moment where I go, I remember that. That's really special. I would quite like to do that. And I think you'll find a lot of athletes have that, you know, a bit of a moment where they see it and they just think, yes, that's me, I'd like to do that.

That's incredible. And what. So I suppose that that prompts a couple of questions. Dad was coach right from the off. Was he? Did you his dad always been coach?

Nearly. There was a gentleman called Ray Bickley. So I was, I was taught to swim at Devonport Swimming Club in Plymouth. I was born in Davenport, so a real dockyard girl. Dad was in the navy. Couldn't be more Plymouth, Ian, to be honest with you. And then I joined Denver Royal Swimming Club. I swam with a guy called Ray Bickley and then Ray decided to retire. So my dad took over when I was about 11 because there was just nobody else to take over. So he was self taught, you know, he was sporty but he really knew nothing particularly about swimming. He just then read every book. And then from that sort of summer every year he would go around where is the best coach in the world? Are they in America, Canada, Australia, wherever. And we would go. So as soon as the swimming program was over, we'd pack up and we'd disappear to some part of the world where I just go training. And he'd just take notes constantly and just read everything under the sun. So, you know, huge admiration. And he's still coaching. My dad is 86 and he is still coaching. Now marching up and down a pool, that's fantastic.

And do you still get involved with him and his coaching or do you leave him to that?

No, not really. He's in London, he's Hemel Hempstead way, so he coaches a bit. With Watford it's more of a part time job now because he really can't do it, you know, every morning it's too much. But he still loves it and he still feels that he's got information to give to the kids. He absolutely adores them. Swimming well and it makes him feel useful, you know, so it's, it's, it's still really good that he can use his brain as well. Marching up and down the pool, that's his world, you know, Mine really is with the BBC on the side of the pool. I've been there now for 26 years, which is ridiculous.

Amazing.

I've done, ooh, what have I done? 12 Olympic Games and I haven't missed one since 1976. So I've either had a microphone in my hand or I've obviously been racing.

Which, which we definitely need to sort of delve into that later on as to. Because of how, I mean there can't be many people have seen that many Olympics along the way. So you'll have, you know, I'm sure you'll have seen some amazing trends over that time. Well, I mean, let's dive into that now. So tell us a little bit about what your first Olympics was like. I mean, what was, I mean going to the Olympics at 13 is astonishing. So what was that like?

Well, I was 57 so I never really looked terribly 13 year old. And I think people see that going to a major event when you're very young is very overwhelming. Well, actually it's almost opposite because you know that you have other things in you. So you're just like this massive sponge. You know, you go to this event and you're wide eyed, you're taking it all and you're improving. Every single time you get into the pool to race, you know you're going to get better. You probably know before you go you're not going to win anything because you're just not at that level yet. But it's an opportunity to get vast experience. For me it's memories of these Germans because that obviously all started in the early 70s, 76, 80. They totally and utterly dominated. So this huge great East German winning women that were winning everything, you know, and it was 50 meter pools all over the place. It was an Olympic village, it was 24 hour food, it was mixing with the other sports, which I'd never done. So it was a big eye opener. But it never felt like it was a stressful situation because I always felt that the future was in front of me. Whereas when you go to an Olympics, when everyone is building you up and you're expected to win a medal, that's when it becomes incredibly hard.

So how did you get on in your first Olympics?

I was 17th out of 32. That's all right, isn't it? I was kind of in the middle somewhere. You know, I would have made a semi final nowadays, which would have been pretty cool. Just about that sort of level, you know. And I was improving and I came back actually some 200 meters backstroke. And then I came back and started specializing in medals and then set the British record for the 400 meters individual medley. And that's where I stayed after that.

Fantastic. And so tell us, pick out a couple of highlights of your Olympic journey.

That particular one was bumping into Olga Corbett in the dining hall. And going into a dining hall in an Olympic village which is the size of a football field. I mean it is massive. It's open 24 hours a day. It's serving food from all over the world. It's all free. You just have this pass and everything is free. You know, it's the size of an Olympics, which is so fascinating. And the fact you rub shoulders with everybody from everywhere, you know, regardless of color, religion, country sports, we're all just one big melting pot. It's just the most wonderful place. And so you sit there just watching people coming in, trying to work out where they come from, what they do, what sport they do, how much they're eating. You know, if they're a gymnast, they've got an egg on a plate, you know, and if they're a weightlifter, the mountain, the food is like this. And it's just, it's a phenomenal place to be. There's Nothing like it. You know, I love the Commonwealth Games. I'm very much looking forward to Birmingham coming up shortly and obviously another multi sport activity and home games, which is great, but there's nothing. If you ask any athlete what medal they want to win, it will be an Olympic one.

Yeah, yeah. And so tell us about your Olympic medal. Tell us about, tell us the story around winning your Olympic medal.

So a lot of pressure reading up to the 1980 Olympics. You know, I came back from the Olympics in 76, won medals at European Championships the following year, won two Commonwealth goals the following year after that, when I was only 15 then I had glandular fever in 1979, really difficult year. Didn't know it was glandular fever. Dad was quite tough because when I was 11, I fell out of a tree and broke both my arms. And you carried on swimming? Yes. Oh my goodness, about that.

How did you carry on swimming?

So I was a total tomboy. I was up a tree, falling out of a tree, training with the boys, short hair, smelling of chlorine. And so I did exactly that. I went off into the woods, fell out of the tree, knew that I'd done something, pick up my watch with my two fingers, walked home. My arms looked like a step, you know. So I walked into the kitchen, Dad, I think I've broken my arm. And he went, oh, for God's sake. Sharon could support it with the other but not think I broken that one too. So both bones, both arms had gone, had then put in plasters, which in the old days was very much from here to here, you know, the whole thing was like this. And then two days later I had blue fingers. So they reset the plasters. About then two days later they rang up and they said, we think you might have, we should check because obviously we might have not set them properly. Went back, one of them wasn't set properly, so they took them off, re broke it, reset it on the way back from the hospital, dad went, you've missed a week's, a week of training. And I went, okay, yeah, I guess I have. And he went, well, we can't have that, can we? So we went to Tesco's, he picked up a load of plastic bags and he worked out how he could take these plastic bags around my arms. And I just found with two broken arms for three months.

But yeah, it's possible, I must admit that I've done exactly the same as well. I am. Yeah.

Isn't it amazing?

Yeah. Actually, growing up down on the south coast as well, we all Our family were farmers. So I actually had an AI glove that I put on and then some tape around it.

So, yeah, ingenuity. The following year I was running 100 metres at school. The last time my dad said that I could run school sport, the field wasn't very good. Put my foot in a pothole, tore every ligament in my knee, my foot stayed in one place and everything just spun and so my dad just tied my legs together. Three months of just doing arms only and then I went to the Olympics the following year. So that preparation kind of worked, but, you know, I wouldn't recommend it. So, yeah, it does teach you what you're capable of doing. You know, that's the thing what you. What determination and perseverance and how incredible the human body is.

And actually, I mean, I would imagine, yeah, you're right in that when you're being forced to swim with your legs strapped together, or forced to swim with two broken arms and massive buoyancy aids attached to them, it must improve your strength. It probably doesn't do a lot for your technique, I would imagine, but. But then when you get kind of freed up, it's. Yeah, I mean, that's incredible. So I interrupted you, you telling us the story about you winning your medal. So carry on with that story.

Where was I with that story? So, yeah, I just think that leading up to 79, obviously it was a difficult year also because the Russians invaded Afghanistan. So then Mrs. Thatcher turned around and said, well, I think all of our Olympic team should boycott. So not only was there glandular fever, there was a lot of expectation and pressure. There was knowing the East Germans were there and we couldn' do anything about the fact that they were taking stuff and we couldn't seem to catch them or stop them. There was this added pressure that we weren't even sure, training six hours a day, whether we were going to get to go. And as you know, as an, you know, as an athlete, there usually only is one Olympic window. If you're lucky enough, sometimes you might get two, but for most of us, there's one in a four year sort of space where you go, this is the optimum time for me. And that was probably where I thought mine was. So it was very difficult, you know, training for about three or four months, devoting six hours a day with no lottery funding those days. Also trying to do my exams at school at the same time, not knowing when I was going to get to go to the games. And then Mrs. Thatcher turned around and said, well, we won't support you, the BOA said, well, we don't take any money from the government. So, you know, you can't really tell us that we shouldn't go because you don't financially control us. Good on them. And so a few of us went, but the team for London, for example, was 550 athletes for 2012. The team for Moscow was 150. So we were a tiny team, but predominantly people they thought would win medals or get into finals. We had no sponsors, so they all removed all their kit sponsor. We weren't able to do the opening ceremony. When we won our medals, we weren't allowed to put the union jack up. We weren't allowed to watch other athletes. We weren't allowed to go to, you know, weren't allowed to hang around. So we got sent home, we finished. So it was quite, it was quite sad Olympic Games from that perspective. But I will, I will always be forever grateful that the boa stood up to Mrs. Thatcher and we got to go.

Well, because as you said about, I've heard you say on other podcasts that, you know, that the athletes that were deprived of being in that sort of position, you know, we don't know the names of those athletes. And in fact that kind of, you've mentioned already the sort of the drug taking of the Eastern Germans throughout that period. And that's kind of how you where your passion around transgender in sport has, has been born from, isn't it? So, so tell us a little bit about what, you know, what you experienced with the, the drug taking while you were competing.

So this was a systematic, in a state run doping program, they put young girls on oral steranobol, old fashioned testosterone steroids during puberty. They took anyone with any sort of talent so you could be a fairly average club athlete. And they put you on these drugs through puberty. Now we know because when the war came down, we had access to all of their files. So, you know, even though during the competition we knew because they would have athletes that came out of nowhere and we'd never seen them compete before and they would break world records, so they hadn't done the progression which everybody else has to do as you're getting better. They also looked and sounded, you know, very masculine. They had five o' clock shadows, they had very deep voices, they had terrible skin. You know, it was very evident what was going on. And they had this vast success in the women's events and hardly any difference in the men's events. So for example, in Moscow, when I won my silver medal, they won 90% of the women's medals in the swimming pool and less than 5% of the men's. So in most events, they took first, second and third. You know, it's just not possible. You know, we get very excited If America takes 1, 2, 3, you know, in something in the sprinting, they don't turn around and win every single one of the races in one. So it was so evident. And this was just going on, games after Games, competitions after competition. We weren't doing out of season testing. They had East German doctors sitting on doping panels, you know, and I don't think they really cared. You know, these poor girls were just guinea pigs, you know, and what they were using had massive long term side effects. So I feel that the IOC drastically let people like me down, but they also let those young girls down because they did nothing to stop it, you know, and many of them have died. They have huge, nasty side effects now, which means that they're on heart pills and they've had sterility problems, not to mention the fact that obviously it just changed them, you know, physically as well, which they've had to live with. So it was a horrendous period of time. And that went on from the early 70s to when the war came down in 89. So it absolutely ruined the 76, the 80 Olympics, not the 84, because they boycotted in retaliation. And then the 88 Olympic Games as well were sort of, you know, it was just beginning to change and people were beginning to realize what was going on. So it wasn't quite as dominant, but that was in rowing, track and field, and swimming. Those are the three events that they actually decided to put this program behind. And so when we went into the Stasi afterwards and did this wonderful documentary, they showed that they could make a 9% improvement by giving the girls male puberty, basically. And with that 9%, they totally and utterly dominated. Well, as you will know as athletes at the Olympic Games, there's anything between 10 and 30% difference between a male and female performance. 30% being very explosive activities like weightlifting. 10% being more sort of middle distance running and everything in between. So swimming tends to be around the 12, 13, 14%. Cycling, the same sort of thing. High jump, long jump, about 20%. So the more explosive it is, the more benefit there is through having male puberty and things like boxing, for example. A male of equal weight, so not bigger, equal weight, will hit 160% harder than a female can hit. So in a contact sport, it's dangerous. It's just Crazy. So this was always my problem. It's nothing to do with being transphobic or having a problem with anyone that chooses to transition that has gender dysphoria. I have nothing but empathy for anybody that, you know, is going through that. But I genuinely believe that female athletes deserve the same opportunity that males get. And when we spend millions of pounds trying to stop anyone from cheating and having the tiniest advantage, to say that a female athlete is supposed to line up next to someone that has a massive advantage because of their biology is just not fair. So we have to have discussions about how we find better solutions, you know, and. And what was happening that one side of the debate wanted to develop, wanted to debate, and wanted to use science, and the other side of the bait just wanted to close us down and call us names. And so that was what made it terribly difficult.

And so we'll come back to the Transgender in Sport piece in a minute, because I think that's. That's something we definitely want to explore some more. But with. With the drug taking, was it being called out? You know, were athletes talking, you know, raising it as a concern? I mean, you say it was. It was obvious to you because they've got the five o' clock shadow, and.

Yeah, it was obvious to everybody. So everybody knew. We used to speak out. And then my father got. Was never selected as an international coach because he was called a troublemaker. You know, Shirley Babashov, who won a load of silver and bronze medals in 1976, got called a bad loser by the American media. So it's a similar sort of thing that's been happening around the trans debate in the fact that anyone that tries to call out the situation gets called names and gets vilified by the media. And it's almost. It's ridiculous how similar it is in lots of ways, you know, And I don't understand how anyone can turn around and, you know, and argue that we couldn't see what was going on at the time, because we absolutely could. There is no way that anyone in the world wins 90% of the women's events and hardly anything of the men's. You know, a tiny little country like East Germany that before 1976 won nothing. It's just not possible.

And there's a lady whose name now escapes me, ironically, that you. You mentioned in one of the interviews I listened to where she came fourth, but she's fourth to three East German swimmers, so, you know, she would have had a gold medal.

Yeah. Would have had a totally different life, wouldn't she. That's an Oscar that you're talking about. She was fourth in the 100 butterfly. We had quite a few people actually, that would have won medals on the British team. In fact, I would have won a second medal if it hadn't been for East Gemmas as well. So, you know, their whole lives would have been different and no one remembers who comes forth. Even though it's an incredible achievement, you know, there's no way that you're going to be able to make a career out of coming forth, unfortunately. And she was only beaten by East Germans, so.

Yeah, and it is really. I mean, it is incredibly sad. I can't remember which book I was reading that almost argued at times in it that there should be some performance enhancing drugs allowed because it's so impossible to police them all. But in the same book it talks about, you know, the, the detrimental effects that, that it had on, on those East German girls that. Yeah, as you say, some of them are no longer with us. I think some transitioned through to men because that was kind of the effect it had on them in their teenage years.

Because the problem with that is if we turned around and say, well, let's allow some drugs, it would just become a competition of the chemistry and it will become a competition of the countries that have the least regard for their athletes and for human rights and for human health, you know, so, you know, without meaning to put too much of a fine point on it, China would win everything because they would just get told, this is what we're going to do and you are just going to do this, you know, Whereas other countries that could have more common sense about them hopefully would check things a bit better, wouldn't, wouldn't be prepared to go down those avenues just yet. We can't have a competition that's about pharmacists, you know, it's got to still be about the human ability to be the best. So we've got to fight the good fight, otherwise we would give in on so many other things. We just go, why bother to fight crime? You know, it's the same concept, isn't it? We're always just trying to be a decent, fair and honest society and that's got to, you know, cross over into sport, really.

And just while we're on this drugs point, what have you made of how Russia have been treated with their state drug program?

I'm just utterly disgusted in the ioc. I've never been undisgusted in the ioc. You know, I just think historically they have a horrendous track record of not doing the right thing. And they did exactly the same thing with the East German situation. They allowed that to go on for 20 years. Then we had Sochi and they did absolutely nothing. You know, I found it heartbreaking in Rio. I'm on the side of the pool and we had Russian athletes that received two bands that were still swimming, you know, right after Sochi. I mean, it was just extraordinary what was going on. And then we have, you know, the Olympic Games put in Beijing with, you know, the human rights history. It's been about the money. It's not about the athletes. I mean, I don't know whether you're aware, but, you know, 7% of what the IOC makes, which is vast, goes back to the athletes. 7%.

And so, yeah, I mean, it just seems astonishing that it's not there to protect the athletes and improve the athletes. It's clearly a. I mean, where does all that money go?

Into expenses, you know, into lovely, wonderful tax havens where they have their center out in Switzerland and to all sorts of other things. But it certainly doesn't go into the pockets of the athletes. I just find it so depressing, you know, that we have something as important as the Olympic Games, the ioc and it really isn't the bastion that everybody would want it to be. And that's what's so frustrating. And when the trans rules changed in 2015, you know, of course, course, people on the, in the trans lobby were saying, well, here's the IFC making these rules. That must be absolutely correct because they're doing it. And I'm going, no, no. Their track record is not particularly wonderful with regards to doing the right thing. There was no science involved. They didn't. They didn't consult coaches or athletes. They certainly didn't ask the female athletes. The only people they consulted were trans activists and the transgender woman scientists with a very flawed study based on retired middle distance runners, eight of them. And, you know, it was horrendous. I mean, and then since then, they've got even worse. They've turned around and gone, well, we're now going to back away from even setting a limit on testosterone whatsoever and just pass the buck to the. To the different governing bodies. And everybody has just been passing the buck and been frightened to do anything. So, you know, I'm so proud of Fina that they have come out and at last done something. But it's taken seven years. Can you believe it's seven years since the governing body has asked a single competing athlete, female athlete, what they Thought it took seven years to ask a female athlete how they felt about it.

Wow.

And.

For those people that aren't sort of, well, read on this or think, actually, you know, is there a really, you know, if the hormones are brought back into. Into, you know, some sort of reasonable level, is there a hormonal advantage and is there a physical advantage if you are born male but then transition to being. Being a female? So can you explain the science behind both hormonal advantage and physical advantage?

Okay, so basically what FINA has done is they decided to set the limit on male puberty, which is what we've always been talking. It's what I've been. Always been talking about is male puberty and creating a female protected classification and an open and inclusive classification. You know, anyone that loves sport wants everyone to be involved in sport. There's never been about trying to get anybody banned from sport. And when newspapers use the word banned, it's so artificial and unfair and incorrect because no one's ever been banned. They've only been banned from a classification that they don't belong in. So they've always been able to do sports. They just have to do it with the other people in that race has the same biology as them. They've been banned from the women's class because they're male, you know, or they banned from the under 12 because they're 15, or they're banned from the lightweights because they're a heavyweight, you know, so that's the whole point of classifications. If we didn't have classifications, young, fit, healthy men would win everything. That's it. You know, disabled people wouldn't win anything, children wouldn't win anything and women wouldn't win anything. So, you know, we have these classifications to press to enable success across society in sport. Now, testosterone is what comes in, obviously, with young boys about 11, 12. My son's 15. It's breasting out on him all over the place at the moment. It's just crazy. And he's a young rugby player. It makes an absolutely huge difference. Having said that, though, males also benefit from being taller, having different bone structure, having different Q angle, which is your angle from your hip to your knees, which we know creates a lot more injuries in women than it does in men because we have a wider hip because of childbirth. None of these things are ever going to be changed by reducing your testosterone levels. And all of the testosterone levels that we have in place at the moment still do not bring you down to women's levels. So men's testosterone levels are anywhere between 7.7, up to about 30 nanomoles of testosterone per liter of blood blood. Most women are under one. If you've got endometriitis, you might go up to about two, but then you've got all the problems that come with endometriis which are not very nice. So, you know, so the vast majority, including Olympians, extremely successful Olympians, including myself, are all under one nanomole of testosterone per liter. Now, if I was to compete tomorrow with the testosterone that say Emily Bridges is allowed to compete with in British cycling, I would receive an instant four year ban. So again, I find that extremely hard to understand how that is. Okay. Even so, she's benefited from male puberty and she's also allowed to have five times what I have in my system. And if I put in my system what she has, I would get a ban.

As well as having then the advantage of having the better cue angle which cyclists is actually shown to really important in cycling.

It's very. Because it creates where you can get the power, you know, so that that benefit will never go from Emily Bridges. She will always have that benefit. And to me, that's not fair. You know, when we spend so much money trying to stop people from cheating in the, in cross sport, but obviously we are fighting so that men can have fair sport. Why are the governing bodies not fighting so that women can have fair sport? Why were we just expected to move over? And again, the other thing that's, that's ironic and ridiculous is that transgender men, so biological females still opt to compete with the women. So Both at the NC2 as and at the Olympic Games, the transgender and non binary athletes that we had competing all chose to compete with the women. So they can identify as whatever gender they want to, but they still find it perfectly capable of racing with their biological sex. And that's again, what I feel is very important. You know, if you. Why yes, identify however you like, but race where it's fair.

Yeah, And I think one of the ones that I heard you talking about was, and I can't remember again, I can't remember the name of the athlete, but as a, as a guy, I think was 500th in the USA out of all university athletes and then suddenly went as a female, went straight through to being number one in the world.

Yeah, you're talking about Lia Thomas. So Leah Thomas was competing at Penn State University, was a very average distance male swimmer, swam, you know, competitively up to the age of 21, then decided that they wanted to transition and then competed in the NC2 as earlier this year and became NC2A's champion, beating three American Olympic medalists and was over was I think 662 or something in the NC2 as a male was further down the line. If you want to include all American male swimmers. So these aren't people at university, these are just across the whole of America. So that would put her, you know, somewhere at 1000. And if you want to include awesome as around the world that we probably wouldn't even put her in the top 3000 and yet still went and beats three American Olympic medalists at the NC2As, as a distant swimmer. So that's a bit like Mo Farah Dasani wants to run the hundred and winning a medal. Yeah, that's how ridiculous the whole thing was. And six foot four to top it all off. You know, I mean it couldn't be more ridiculous. And just to make it even worse, this week, Charlie, the NC2As have nominated Lia Thomas to be female athlete of the year. Even though Lia Thomas, now based on FINA rules, cannot go forward, have said it's unfair.

I mean the whole thing is bizarre, isn't it? I also remember hearing you say that in Rio. I think it was the 800 meters. All three ladies on the podium were actually males.

Yeah. So they're all dsd. So differences of sexual development, old fashioned language, intersex which doesn't exist. And anyone that is DSD hates the term intersex because it infers that they're an intersex which doesn't exist as people with DSD are still male or female. But someone like Caster Semenya is what they call DSD5ARD. And that means that CASTOR was born with internal testes. So CASTOR is fully fledged 46XY male. But because born with internal testes as a youngster, was picked up, didn't see the testes and just went, this must be a little girl. But went through male puberty. So the first three at the Rio Olympic Games in the 800 were all DSD males. So the first female in that race came fourth.

Wow. I mean it is absolutely astonishing. But what's more astonishing is that I didn't know that until I listened to you speaking about this. You know, this stuff isn't publicized and it isn't talked about and the people that. There's not many people that have been talking about it. I know that you rallied, I think something like 60 top athletes to sign a letter to support the open categorization. But Only, I think only five out of those 60 actually have publicly spoken about this. I get the impression that you've had quite a lot of abuse for speaking out. You've lost earnings for speaking out. So tell us a little bit about that and how. And your thoughts around that.

Yeah.

So after the rule change, you know, I gathered 60 of my friends, literally, in a weekend, including people like Paula Radcliffe and Kelly and Sally, who have spoken out. But of those 60 people that signed the letter to the IOC asking for them to do the research. So that's what we asked them to do, is just do the science first, please, before you change the rules, because you don't have any science that supports what you're doing. None at all. So. And which was totally ignored. I don't think we even had a response to the letter. And of those 60 people, every single one of them being Olympic medalists or world champions, only about half a dozen have actually stepped their head above the parapet. And most of them, you know, even if they have, have said very little and then kind of ducked away again and carried on, which is fair enough, because it is. It is horrendous. I mean, the abuse you get is extraordinary. You know, I've had threatened threats to my family, to my home, to me. They call up my employers, they call up my sponsors, they called up all the companies that. Charities that I work for. You know, it's absolutely horrendous. But my personal conscience, because of what I went through in the 70s and the 80s with the East Germans, just would not allow me to sit still and do nothing and just go, I've got my medal. I can sit back. It doesn't matter if this generation loses.

I.

Because I. Because that's what happened to me, you know, my generation, and I was one of those lucky ones that managed to get a medal and had a career off of it. So I felt this was very much sex discrimination, because sport nowadays isn't something we all do on a Saturday morning for a bit of fun, you know, this is a fully fledged, proper career with earning capacity and the opportunity to, you know, to become a pundit afterwards and all sorts of things that it can help you launch later in life. So we're. We're taking away the opportunity for biological females to have the same opportunities of a sporting career, as well as being able to just, you know, win medals and get experiences.

What do you feel is preventing people? Back in the times when you were competing, but also now, what do you think is preventing people speaking out? Is it the abuse or is it their athletes that are competing now are concerned about their own careers or their sponsors? Like, what do you feel is kind of the main factor?

The athletes themselves have been told not to speak, so they have found it very difficult. A lot of them will retweet my tweets. The braver ones will retweet my tweets. I was getting one phone call a week at one stage from athletes and coaches. Some of them absolutely in tears because they did not know how to deal with it. They were close to walking away from their jobs. We have had no backbone from British NGBs in this country whatsoever. I am so proud again of triathlon for coming along. They've gone one step even further than fina, you know, because there's this little bit of a gray area around what age someone could start taking puberty blockers. And British triathlon have gone, nope, we're going to draw the line full stop at biological female, you know, and we're going to create this open classification. So we want everyone to be involved, but we are going to protect both sexes. And so, you know, I'm hoping that FINA will go that way as well eventually, because at the moment they've got a bit of a moving feast with a consultation that's going on for six months, months about whether they create an open classification, whether they do something extra or whether they bolt the open classification onto the men's or whatever. So they've got this sort of six month consultation period. So we'll know come January what they're going to do next. But I'm very hopeful that world athletics will also follow suit, triathlon will follow suit, you know, and that we can create a snowball that comes down a mountain where all the sports turn around and do what they should have been doing right from the word go, which is to protect female athletes as well.

Because it strikes me that, yeah, it's taken so long to get female sport nearly on a level and we're still.

Not there, we're miles away still, you know.

Well, exactly, that's why I say nearly, because I think, I mean, there is a huge effort to get it up there. You know, as a father of two girls, I want to see female sport doing well. And I think, you know, there's certain organizations like the BBC is doing a fantastic job of just kind of, of, you know, I can't remember who said it, but if you can't see it, you can't be it. And so they're putting it out there. And I think that that's that's really, really good. But then this seems like a massive backward step.

Well, here's, Here's a really interesting statistic. So in the 1976 Olympic Games, we had a wonderful Dutch sprinter called Ina Brigitte. And Ina Brigitte was beaten to third by two East Germans. Now she's black. She would have been a black Olympic champion back in 1976. That would have changed so much for so many people.

Yeah.

And then, you know, again, it's kind of disappeared off for decades again. And now we're fighting all the time to get people to recognize that you could be from anywhere and you can be any color and be an amazing swimmer. You know, some of it's cultural and. But some of it is, like you said, see it, to do it, you know, and that's. That's very, very important as well. We still, only, as female athletes, get 10% of the airtime or the newspaper space. 10%.

Wow.

So if you go on, like, just to say, go on to the Times today and you look at their sports page, you know, they'll probably have 12, 14 stories. You'll be lucky if there's one or two there that talks about women.

Well, you'll be pleased to know Tribathlon is at least 50%, if not a slight bias towards female athletes.

Well, there are some sports, aren't there? And swimming was always one. You know, I've always been really lucky that I've been in a sport that's had wonderful equality. I never even thought about it. And what's so weird is I find myself now being introduced to Sharon Davis, the feminist. I had never thought of myself as a feminist ever in my life until the last few years, you know, because it just didn't occur to me. I was brought up in the 80s with Mrs. Thatcher waving a flag, saying, you can be anything you want to be. Girls go out there, you know, and that's what I really believed. And I was in a sport where I got the same amount of space as the guys got. It's only really been in the last few years that I've noticed an incredible misogyny just soaking into. Into society in general. But it's been obviously very bad in my area. And that's why I just thought, well, no, I'm not putting up with this. My mum used to tell me how in the. How she bought her first house with my dad and my granddad had supplied the money for their deposit, and my mum wasn't allowed to be on the mortgage because in those days, they did not allow women to be on the mortgage. Wow. I just think now my mum would be proud that I've. Because she died sadly four years ago. And you mentioned that, you know how hard it's been. I've used my mum's money up, so my mum left me some money. She left me about £80,000. I've used every penny up to keep myself afloat, to be able to fight this.

Can you, can you give us an example of how that's impacted you as financially as it. As much as it has?

Just because I'm not being, I'm not, you know, work's not coming my way because agents don't want the hassle, they don't want the aggro. It's not even as if they don't disagree. They just don't want to be. They don't want to be targeted by the trans activists. They just don't want the hassle. And so, you know, if there's three of us going for the same job, then I just don't get a look in really. The BBC have stood by me, which is great. I'll be at the Commonwealth Games and I'll be at the European Championships. And I do feel that things are turning now. You know, I've had a few inquiries recently. You know, I've got some other things that I'm very passionate about that I'm working on as well. But it does feel, at long last, people are beginning to be less frightened to speak. And it's only ever been about, let's find a respectful way that we can deal with this because nobody wants anyone not to be involved in sport. And you mentioned triathlon. You know, I'm pretty sure that you guys are like us, we train together as mixed sex. So, you know, it's not like we have all the girls over here and all the boys over here in training. I train with boys most of my life. It was only when I came to compete that we went in our own, you know, separate races. So there is no reason why everyone can't train together. However you want to identify. It's only when you come to race. This is about the biology that you have, not the feeling that you would like to be, you know, and suppressing testosterone after going through male puberty is going to make practically no difference whatsoever.

Yeah. And I mean, I always think that triathlon is an incredibly open and kind of forward thinking sport. You know, having come to it fairly late in life, if that's. I'm not sure whether that's Right. Or not. But late in my, as a percentage of my life, it's always struck me as a very forward thinking sport. But what you just said kind of makes me think about the teenagers that are starting to take the hormone treatments earlier. And in fact, I think even in the US and north, in Canada, it's being pushed by drug companies, which, when you look at what's happened with opioids, is absolutely frightening.

And often the same company, actually, funnily enough.

Yes.

Yeah, that. Follow the money.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I mean, I know it's not your area of sort of expertise, but do you have any thoughts on, before we move away from transgender, any thoughts on people? You know, is there any science around the long term impact of people?

There's no scientific proof either that, you know, that gender dysphoria is any different than someone who has anorexia. So it's a dysphoria. And it was only when the World Health Organization moved it out of a mental health issue that we've had this kind of explosion. And so there is social contagion. You know, you can take areas of the United Kingdom, for example, Swindon, it has three times the national average, you know, of young girls that think they're transgender. Well, that isn't, because in Swindon they've got loads of people that have gender dysphoria. It's a social contagion. So it's very worrying if you're going to put them on puberty blockers and puberty blockers are going to stop their brains from maturing through puberty. Historically, with gender dysphoria, 80% of young kids that show gender dysphoria, if they have cognitive therapy and they're supported through puberty, 80% come out the other side as gay. But now what's happening is that we're putting young people, younger and younger, younger on drugs, drugs which will have massive side effects and will mean that they will be on drugs for the rest of their lives. Whether that's where they decide to detransition, the damage that will be done will probably mean that they will have to be, you know, medicalized in some shape or form forever and there will be side effects. And that does really worry me. It does really worry, but it, as you said, it's not my area of expertise. It's just the area that I've had to learn about to know the whole subject. And it was really important that I understood the whole subject. And that's where J.K. rowling has come in for so much flack. You know, that's her area, really, where she's trying to fight for safeguarding of young people, that they're not making mistakes, which all young people do, because we all did it just the same, but these are mistakes which they might be paying for for a long time.

Yeah, I think it is. That bit is the bit that I find frightening, particularly when, as you say, follow the money. And guess what? Yeah, it's about drug companies making.

Drug companies, putting massive amounts of money. I mean, the Democratic Party in America is predominantly supported by the pharmaceutical industry.

It is frightening. So one thing that I remember hearing you say when you. When I saw you speak at a conference that I was also speaking at was that. I can't remember whether it was in your talk or whether it was a question that was asked afterwards, but I got. And this was quite a few years ago, so forgive me if I was. I'm inaccurate, but I think you said that you wouldn't put. But as much as you absolutely loved going to swim training and all of that sort of stuff as a kid, you wouldn't have put your children through the same kind of intensity of training or the same style. Am I right in saying that? And tell me a little bit more about that.

Yes and no. I mean, absolutely. I wanted to make sure that my kids had a much broader base than me because I was involved in very competitive sports so terribly early. And my dad had, through no fault of his own, you know, he genuinely believed that a day missed was a day that the competition had on me. So he was really tough and he pushed way too hard, harder than he needed to, which knocked a lot of the enjoyment out of it for me. You know, when I won my medal, I couldn't wait to stop. And really, I didn't want to stop. It was just I needed a break. And in those days you couldn't have a break. So I went to University of America on a scholarship, found that I would have to be really into something serious to maintain my scholarship. Came back to the uk, did a program called Give Us A Clue, which you're too young to remember, but it was a silly quiz show. They paid me £40 and they branded me a PO professional, and then they would let me compete anymore. And that was at the same time as Sebco and Steve Ovett were racing each other every weekend, being paid a lot of money to put into a trust fund, Andy Norman, all of that period. And I was brand for 40 quid. So, you know, there's been a few things a few Nice big hurdles in my life. So swimming has always been a bit of a challenge and I just felt five o' clock in the morning, six hours a day, smelling of chlorine. There were other sports that maybe they could do, but they all swam really well. They swam at club level. Finn in particular, my youngest is 15, would have made a very, very good swimmer, huge, great feat, but they used it as a base for other things. So Elliot, my eldest, went on to play rugby at fairly decent level. He's 28. He was offered a contract at Newport Dragons but chose to turn it down. He's now doing really well in recruitment's, got his own business and Gracie did track and field, competed for England when she was 15, 16, 17, and then she got a navicular bone in her foot that just would not, not heal. And so it just kept breaking season after season. So after struggling with that until she was about 20, she decided to stop. And now she works in London in an advertising agency. She's doing great. And then there's young Finn, who's 6 foot 1 and is on Bath Rugby Academy. And he swam and he cycles and he does all sorts of things, but they've all been good swimmers, you know, they just did not want to be a swimmer. And I think some of it was about also being compared to Mum. I like the idea of them making their own way, doing something else rather than coming in behind, you know, in, in shape or form, being in my shadow or being compared all the time. I wanted them to do their own thing.

Well, I think as we talked about before, before we started recording the episode, it's, it teaches you so much both from a fitness point of view but also from a discipline point of view, doesn't it? And it sets you up so well for other things. And I think actually there's a book called Range by David Epstein, I think it is brilliant book. But he talks about, he talks about how in this day and age there's too much specialism too early. In fact, the analogy I seem to remember he uses, he says with doctors, they're getting so specialized that he now needs to check that an ear surgeon is not a left ear surgeon, as opposed to just any ear surgeon. And actually the people that are becoming most successful in today's environment often have got this really wide range of different experience and that sets them up for being very good at something later on on because they're bringing in different, different.

Elements or coming to your sport slightly later. You know, even Adam, Adam really didn't come to his sport until quite late, to be honest. So it's about the longevity of your sport. It's about taking little breaks, it's about maintaining your passion for it, you know, and. And obviously lottery funding makes a huge difference because these guys now can be full time athletes, you know, and they can take decent breaks. They don't have to get up at 5 o' clock in the morning. You know, they can have a nice house and a decent car and even have a family and, you know, juggle their life and have the full career that they deserve and that they want. So lottery has been a massive success and again, I'm quite proud that helped to launch that. Back with John Major, I remember being in a hot air balloon, going up with the Chancellor and talking about it, you know, and this, it's. Yeah, I mean, I've seen so many changes. I've seen the Olympics go from something which crippled our country, you know, in Montreal 1976, to this in LA, where it totally changed to this commercial vehicle that it is now and what it's grown into do. It's been fascinating and every Olympics has a really special feel about it. You know, I remember 2000 being obviously, I think, in Sydney, and that was all about being the Green Olympics and the first games makers and all that sort of stuff. And then Athens was the celebration of 100 years and there we were in front of the Acropolis, the last time we swam outdoors. That felt like it was the right place to be. And so each Olympics has a real, you know, feel. China 2008, you know, all about technical, all about China trying to show what they could do. The biggest and the best, spent the most amount of money, the biggest fireworks display and so on and so forth. It actually being quite gray and being quite contained and the security was horrendous behind the scenes. And then Rio. Oh my God, how we ever got through Rio, I don't know how your friends in triathlon spoke to you, but how we ever got an Olympic Games that came out of Rio in one piece, I will never know. Because behind the scenes it was bedlam, you know, it really was. There was no infrastructure. We had green swimming pools. It was just mad. But. And then of course, I was in Tokyo, you know, which was another experience altogether. I didn't get to leave my room for three weeks, apart from to get on a bus, go to the pool, do the interviews and get back on a bus again. I ate my food. I did everything in that room for three weeks. It was.

Yeah.

And amongst all of them, how does 2012 compare?

The best? Absolutely the best.

Not that we're biased, of course.

No, of course not. Part of the bid team for 2012. So, you know, love the fact that we started off trying to fight the whole of the, the British taxi business saying that we wanted the Olympic Games and everybody seemed to be so against it and said that will cripple the city and so on. It was amazing. Olympics and even silly things like the security. I don't know if you remember, but the security kind of went down. The security company that was employed to do all the security went bust and then we had to bring all the army in and the army were amazing and they were so happy to be there. And the police were singing and dancing and people were talking to each other on the tube and, you know, we packed out the Olympics, we packed out the Paralympics and we were very clever how we did it. We left a decent legacy. We left great facilities that are still being well used. And that's something that I think is very much part of the Olympic movement now, is how we can build facilities, how we don't create white elephants, you know, what we, what we do going forward that are multi purpose and multi use and a development of what we've got rather than everything starting from scratch every time.

Yeah, I think you're right. It's got to be, it's got to be sustainable as opposed to just loss making, which is absolutely crazy in this day and age, isn't it? So one of the things that's happened in lockdown is that a lot of pools have been closing. Certainly the closest pool, I didn't actually swim in this particular pool, but the closest pool to me closed during lockdown. And I hadn't realized until listening to you speak recently that actually this is a big problem across the UK and not just in lockdown down, but forecasting going forward. Why is that? So tell us a little bit about what's going on there.

Yeah, so here's a really interesting statistic. We lose more people drowning than we do in car crashes and fires combined. Children. So, yeah, so we still have a big problem with drowning statistics. You know, we're a small island with rivers, canals, beaches all over the place and weather like this that we're having at the moment just, you know, brings people out to do silly things, things. So it's really important that our kids can swim. It's part of the national curriculum. At the moment, only 50% of our children are leaving primary school being able to swim 25 meters. They're all supposed to be able to do that. It doesn't happen. We lost 250 pools during COVID Councils used it as an opportunity to run their facilities down that weren't making money and then basically to say, we can't afford to reopen them. And it's predicted by Swim England that we'll lose 2000 by the end of the decade, which is. Which is horrendous, you know, in a sport that is from cradle to grave before everybody at any time in your life and is a lifesaver. So I got involved with a company called Paragon a couple of years ago. How do we. How do we fix this problem? How do we, you know, come up with facilities that we can build quicker, we can build cheaper, that are just as beautiful, just as, you know, environmentally friendly? Their footprint is really good. And we, we imported this stuff from America, which is like tension membrane, and they come with a 50 year guarantee for the actual structure, a 25 year guarantee for the outside, and they are hurricane proof, so they get used a lot up in Scotland on the coast. So the first argument is, oh, they're going to get blown away. Well, actually, it's the opposite. You know, they're designed to wear their amazingly bad weather and they're beautiful and they're clean and they're inviting and they're cheap in comparison. They're about a third cheaper than a standard build and they're also cheaper to run. So. But we need to get councils to think outside the box and to do something slightly different than what they've done in the past. And that's the challenge.

Did you say that was called Paragon, Paul?

Paragon Structures. So they're based here in Bath. So I thought, well, I love this idea. I'm going to buy some shares because I'm passionate about getting leisure facilities and people being fitter and healthier. And this is a really good solution. You know, this works and it saves money.

Well, I will be. I will be contacting Rutland County Council that. Because Rutland now does not have a public pool in the whole county. I mean, and it's only a small county. But it's absolutely crazy.

Yeah, absolutely crazy. You know, this is one of the sports that you can do if you're pregnant, if you're disabled, if you're old, if we're playing with the family, you know, it's really, it's a really important sport. I mean, there are lots of wonderful sports out there, you know, of course, but swimming is also a lifesaver. So all kids should be Able to swim.

And I know, Sharon, you do quite a bit with stability sport and parasports, don't you? Is that correct?

Absolutely. In fact, I used to do stuff with Stoke Mantle before it even became the Paralympic. Yeah. Way, way back in the days. Yeah.

And I was just thinking, like, some of my background being clinical and working in hospitals and working with spinal injuries and things like that. You know, water is one place where, no matter whether that's a hydrotherapy pool or in a pool with somebody, that they can actually have some sort of independence. And I think, you know, that is just so important. And the fact that pools are disappearing and being taken away and, you know, I've even seen that kind of working with people that there isn't anywhere to go.

Yeah. And it's got to be affordable too, hasn't it? You know, this is about councils turning around and going, okay, we need to provide this. It's a public service. We have rising obesity rates, we have a National Health Service that cannot keep up. So rather than just throwing more money constantly into the National Health Service, we have to go, like, prevention has got to be part of our kill, you know, so if we can have people fitter and healthier, you know, I was very much hoping that one of the things that was going to come off the back of COVID was that people would understand that if you were fitter and healthier, you stood a better chance of being able to fight Covid. And this is the same for everything. So, you know, we have got to stop abusing our children. They need to understand what health and fitness is all about. And we need to give them the habits when they're young that they can have for the rest of their lives. And we're just not doing that. You know, it's a really big issue going forward that statistically we had just getting worse year on year on year. And during COVID it, you know, it doubled how bad it got over that space of that couple of years. So we've got to work out how we subsidise the government. My next project, after I can tackle the whole transgender thing and get fair sports sorted out, is to go right. I want mandated at national level that the Government has to say to councils, you must provide facilities, particularly in areas of deprivation, and they must be affordable so that people can use them.

And, of course, the Commonwealth in Birmingham, we've got a new pool, haven't we, just living down the road from it?

Yeah, we have. Can you believe, though, that Birmingham didn't have one? You know, the second city did not have a 50 metre pool, so that was always a bit crazy.

I guess we do it the university, but I don't know the ins and outs of it. But you can't compete in it. You'll probably know the reason why.

Absolutely. I'm not sure if it's a six lane. I've got a funny feeling it might be a bit narrow. I'm honestly not sure. But being a private pool, because it'll be privately owned by the university anyway. But there wasn't a public facility, you know, Birmingham for absolutely years. So I'm really pleased that that's there. The Alexander Stadium has been, you know, all redone, which is beautiful. I saw Derek at the weekend, he was telling me all about the stadium. Yeah, no, very excited. You know, home games are amazing. Commonwealth Games we had last time in Glasgow sort of one games ago because the last ones were in the Gold coast, you know, we're getting them, I think, bidding. You know, you mentioned London. That was what London did. I think London made us realize that we could hold games and we could do fantastic job of it. And so that inspires our youngsters to want to be involved because people can go and watch, you know. And I know that tickets have been flying out for the Commonwealth Games and the pool ones went ages ago because we don't have an awful lot of space, you know, I think. I don't know whether we've got 6,000 or something like that, but you know, they go very, very quickly. And of course the competition at Commonwealth Games is very high because we have the Australians and the Canadians that happen to, you know, they're two of the biggest forces in women swimming in the world at the moment. So we are, you know, going to see some great something in the swimming pool.

Certainly a buzz in Birmingham at the moment, I think. And you know, I think it gets people, doesn't it, in thinking about sports that aren't necessarily sporty but like then it creates an interest, doesn't it as well?

Yeah, absolutely. And we do, you know what, we need some positivity too because we've had such a tough couple of years and we're very, very polarized at the moment. You know, politics has been very polarizing. Life has been very polarizing. We've been very depressed. Depressed and rather negative. And I think something like the Commonwealth Games is very much needed. You know, I was very lucky to be on the 1980s, 1990s bus. I'm going to do myself down. 1990s bus at the pageant. Oh my God, that was such a lovely day. You know, I'm now going to put National Treasure on my cv. It was such a gorgeous day because everybody was so happy and it was so positive. And we need a bit more of that. We absolutely need some more of that.

You mentioned about society becoming more polarized. I was thinking the same. I've been thinking the same thing. And I wonder whether social media has a significant role in that, in that it's forcing people to be more one or more black or more white, when actually, generally speaking, the majority of people should usually be grey. And whatever it is, whether it's politics, whether it's transgender, well, whatever it is. Do you think that that's the case?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, and I think all sorts of things, even like the Black Lives Matter campaign, you know, my daughter organized the rally in Bath and she did it really well, and it was done, you know, very calmly, and everybody cleaned up after themselves. And then you had the same one over in Bristol where at Mayhem, you know, and people were throwing statues in the river and the docks and goodness knows what. And it was just an excuse for a lot of people who probably would have been a football thug at one stage to decide that this was their course. And I think we've created this division which doesn't really exist. You know, when we were doing all of the work for the 2012 Olympic Games, one of the statistics that came out which was so great was that London's the most diverse city in the whole world. The most languages were spoken in London than any other city in the world.

Wow.

And I'm a big believer that we are quite a live and let live country. You know, I grew up, I suppose, not seeing color, not seeing religion, not seeing sexuality. I honestly don't care who you sleep with. It's none of my business. Business. And it certainly doesn't. It's not the most interesting thing about you. You know, not you particularly, Charlie, but anybody. Like, I'm much more interested in your character than I'm interested in who you sleep with. You know, and I just think we've. We started creating all these boxes for everybody, and everybody's got to be fitted neatly into a box. And humans don't do that very well, really. You know, we change character, we move, we grow. You know, what we feel today might be different from what we feel tomorrow. And that's part of being. Being a human. And I hate all the box ticking thing with the passion.

Yeah. I think the whole the black lives matter thing is ultimately all lives matter. Don't they? That's the important thing for me. But yes. Whether we should be pulling down statues. I mean, what's gone in the past has gone in the past. We live, don't we?

We need to spend less time worrying about the slavery of 250 years ago, which we can do absolutely nothing about, and more about the slavery that's happening right now, you know, and that's what we should be bothered about. That's what we should be putting all our effort into, because we can't change the past. All we can do from it is learn from it. And actually, sometimes we need those statues sitting there so that we don't forget about the past.

Yeah. Yeah. And actually, so I hadn't ever thought about this, but I heard you say that, you know, ultimately the pyramids and the Great Wall of China came as a result of slavery, but nobody's pretty much.

Pretty much everything, you know, even if you. Even if you look at. I don't know how New York was built. Built, you know, it was built by very poorly underpaid immigrants from Italy and. And, you know, and Ireland who were paid peanuts to build these buildings. You know, it's almost a form of slavery, isn't it? That is nothing new, sadly. You know, that's the Romans, you know, everything. The Persians, you know, all the great. The Egyptians, all of the great, you know, leading powers at some stage during our history, all based on the back of slavery and not condoning slavery, of course, for one single moment. But that's. It's a learning process. And as I said, I'm much more interested in trying to fix the problems we have right now than worrying too much about the problems we had a long time ago, which we can't change. And they're not relative now. You know, I think it's ridiculous when we ask someone like Prince Charles to apologize for slavery, that has nothing to do with him, you know, I mean. Yeah, yeah.

No, I completely.

Tokenism and virtue signaling and means nothing.

Yeah, yeah. No, I couldn't agree more. One of your other projects, you've got lots of different. You've got your finger in lots of different pies is you have a new HIIT online training thing. Don't you? Tell us a little bit about that. And why have you done that so much?

Like everybody else during COVID you know, it was about how we can try and keep ourselves fit and healthy. The biggest excuse that comes up is lack of time. So I wanted to create a program that can be done four times a week for 15 minutes, one hour a week. Everyone can find one hour a week to do at some stage during your life. And that would stop people from having excuses, just something very simple. Because exercise is often just repetition. It's just about doing it. There's no shortcut, there's no magic pill. You have to put the effort in. But if we could create a program where the least amount of effort was required in the shortest amount of time, that would actually get results after three months. That's what I did. So I created this online HIIT program, which I'm very proud of, and, and I do want to grow that. And maybe once, you know, I'm getting the opportunity to have a bit more of a platform, then I can be able to promote it a little bit more. But I am very proud of it, of what we've done. It's a, it's a really good little program.

Fantastic. Well, I think ultimately it's about keeping people fit and healthy, which has got to be a, you know, a brilliant thing.

And people forget how mental health is, is linked to physical health. You know, we release endorphins when we exercise. Endorphins are nature's antidepressants. And that's another reason why we have a big problem with youngsters that do less and less activity and less and less sport and more and more gadgets. You know, it's mental health issues. One in five girls at the moment, self harm. And I can never get my head around that statistic. When we have more material things than we've ever had before in life and, you know, and more opportunities than we've ever had in life, you know, why do these youngsters feel that, that there's no hope for them and they're so sad and depressed and you hit the nail on the head with social media, I'm sure that that has a massive, massive, you know, impact. And also things like, you know, Love island and Kim Kardashian and the fact that everyone is supposed to look the same, you know, as humans, we're, we're all different and we can all be gorgeous in our own way. You know, we don't all have to look like one type of person for that to be acceptable. I don't believe we've made progression in those areas. I think we've gone the opposite way. Really?

Yeah. I think a friend of mine says, why are we trying to fit in when we were born to stand out? And I think ultimately we should stand out. And I think unfortunately, with social media, you know, when we were growing up, we compared ourselves to the best looking kid in the class or at best the school. Whereas now they're comparing themselves against the best looking people in Hollywood and that are airbrushed within an inch of their existence anyway. And it's just. Yeah, it's. Comparison is the, is the route to misery, isn't it?

And also when we went home we could turn it off, couldn't we?

Yeah.

So if we were, I don't know if we were getting a bit of a bad time at school, it generally stayed at school. Now because of social media, it's 247 and these poor kids that are finding it challenging, you know, they are literally on their online and all the time and the ability to put their phone down and it is one of the strict rules I have in our house is that, you know, the phone has to go down and we don't spend hours on, you know, just playing horrible games and all the rest of it. That's why they have to be involved in sports. And so you have to lead from the front. Unfortunately, parents. So sorry but you need to get them, you know, the best way to get your kids doing things is to do it with them.

Yeah, no, I agree. Now you mentioned that I probably was too young for was it. Give us a clue. Did you say? Yeah, I do remember or I do remember it vaguely. But one TV program I was a massive fan of of was Gladiator. So I can't see if I've got.

Anything Gladiator ish around here.

I actually wanted to be a gladiator. There you go.

So many people. Do you know, I was heartbroken. I actually tried to say no to Nigel Lisker who was the producer. So Derek was working on the show. Derek Redmond, my husband at the time, was working on the show as a trainer and I kept doing the show and I was presenting the kids series with Daily Thompson. Really good friend of mine called Train to Rim, which is kids version. And Nigel kept saying, come on, be gladiators. And I could go, no, no, no, no, no. And in the end I gave in. And then I remember being in the supermarket and I could hear this kid saying to his mum, oh, you know, I want to get her autograph, I want to get her autograph. And mum said, I'm sure it'll be fine. Go up to the frozen chicken, ask her, she'll be okay. So he came up to me, I signed. He went back to his mum and he went, he's Sharon Davis. It was heartbreaking. But yeah, it was a crazy show, wasn't it? 17, 18 million people on a Saturday night, you know, 3, 2, 1.

Yeah, you know, you just. I can always remember Shadow's eyes when he had got there. That was frightening. Probably for the wrong reasons.

I did some Comic Con last year because I thought it would be really fun to catch up with them. So I caught up with Jet, with Diane, with Lightning, with Hunter. Haven't seen Wolf for a while. He went to Australia for a long time. He's back now. But, yeah, you know, it's. It's funny, isn't it? Some of them have really changed. Other things happen and. Yeah, and it's the same as when I go away to commentary, because obviously I'm with all my buddies that used to compete, you know, so they're all doing track and field or they do cycling or judo or wherever, and we just all pretend that we're 30, 40 years younger than we really are and just tell the same stories over and over.

Well, it was certainly a highlight of my youth, that's for sure. Now, we always ask everybody on this podcast for a book recommendation. Doesn't have. It can be anything. But are there any particular books that you found, you know, particularly helpful in your life or books you find yourself recommending regularly? If not books, then other resources similar, but anything that stands out.

What's the book? The Chimp.

The Chimp Paradox.

I do think that for an athlete, you have to be mentally very tough, so it's very underestimated how mentally fit you have to be. And I think even more so in the world that we live in today, when everybody is a specialist and you can't stay off social media and, you know, the pressure that's involved was bad in my day, and it must be tenfold now. So I think that's quite an interesting book, you know, to understand that, you know, that there is this little chimp on your shoulder that's telling you the things that you can't do and then. And how important is for you to understand. But actually, I've done all the hard work, actually, I can do. And what's the very worst thing that's going to happen? I'm going to fail. I'm going to learn. I'm going to get back up and I'm going to do it better next time.

So, last question, Sharon. And this is a new thing for series four, what we've got. We got the last guest from series three, which was Jodi Stimpson, to ask a question, but she didn't know who she was Asking the question to. So, Clare, what was Jodi Stimson's question for Sharon Davis?

Okay, so which country has been the most memorable that you visited and why? And is there another country that you'd really love to visit?

Oh, gosh, countries are so different, aren't they? You know, obviously Moscow is so special because it's, it's defined who I am really. That Moscow Olympic medal. But it was very gray at the time behind the Iron Curtain. If I have to go on holiday anywhere, it would be the Maldives because then I could just be in the water and I'm like, you know, I'm like a, I'm like a fish. Once I'm near the water, I'm just in it and that's it. That's where I'm actually at home. But I love going to Australia. You know, if I had to pick one other country that maybe I had to live in, then maybe it would be Australia.

Fantastic. That's a great place. Yeah, I think, you know, I think, I think a lot of triathletes would also say the same thing. It's a great country if you're interested.

In being love sport, isn't it? Yeah.

Yeah.

And one final question for you, Sharon. What are you most excited, looking forward, what are you most excited about? About?

British swimming is in a really wonderful place. You know, we had the most successful Olympic Games we've ever had in Tokyo. We've got some fantastic young talent, particularly in the men's team. I think the women's team, we need to just pick it up a tiny bit, but it's there. So I think I'm just looking forward to Paris. You know, it's going to be here before we know it because of the fact Tokyo was delayed. We've had such a busy squashed year this year with World Championships, Commonwealth Games and European. We've got Worlds again. You know, it's, it's. Yeah, I mean, before we know it, we will be in Paris and with it being so close to us, there'll be lots of Brits there, we'll have a big team and I think something will be very successful. So from a purely selfish perspective, it will be where my microphone. I'm hoping it will be my 13th Olympic Games and I will still be there. On a personal note, I've got a lovely, gorgeous little two year old granddaughter. So I'm now grandma, which is hilarious, and I get her one day a week and if ever I need grounding, that's the thing that does it because it just brings Me right back down to, you know, here's the potty. Come on. Yeah. So I'm very happy. You know, my kids are all doing really well. At the end of the day, I just want them to be happy and healthy. And that's the best present ever.

Brilliant. Amazing. Sharon, it's been absolutely fantastic chatting to you. I've loved every minute of it. And there's so many wonderful stories in there, but also so some great. Like, I just think how you've stood up for what you believe in is absolutely amazing. So a huge thank you for being on the Tri Bathlon podcast. A huge thank you for standing up for what you believe in. And yeah, we look forward to seeing you on the, on the side of the pool in due course.

Thank you very much. Bye Bye, guys.

The best place to find Sharon Davis is at www.sharondavis.com and that's Sharon with two Rs. All of her social media links are on there. So track it out on there. And also if you want to find out more about the pools and paragon structures, then it's www.paragonstructures.com. again, I'll put these links in the show notes. So, Claire, what did you make of the interview with Sharon Davies?

I thought it was fantastic. You know, I think very kind of in the moment, actually talking about the kind of trans, I want to say, debate, I don't know that it's really a debate, but also the intricacy and the layers that actually sit within that and actually how many years this has been going on, you know, and she was talking about not just, just from a trans perspective, but really with the doping, so to speak, and actually the kind of cheating, I guess that was. That was happening years ago. And the fact she's able to, like that she's speaking out of it, out about it and really leading on it. And I think that's amazing, the work that she's doing.

I think I thought it's absolutely fascinating about. Yeah, exactly. That comparison between the drug taking of, of the seventies and eighties of East Germany and the trans debate today, because clearly they're very different on many, many levels. We're not saying that the trans debate is about cheating, which blatantly East Germany was about, albeit actually in many instances, it wasn't the East German athletes that were cheating themselves, they were being forced to cheat by a state, but the, the fairness of competition and also the IOC's inability or unwillingness to act, I think is a lot of similarities there, which is. Which is really interesting. And I hadn't realized until starting my research is that was why Sharon was so outspoken about it.

And it was the same for me, actually. And I think we probably haven't. Unless you've looked for that information, I think a lot of us probably are not aware actually of the background behind all of this, actually. Not just talking about trans and the fairness within sport, but going right back into the 1970s and things. I think it's fascinating. And the fact that this has all been kind of opened up is great that we're talking about it.

Yeah, I think it's really interesting. And again, I wasn't aware there of kind of how, like, how big a difference it makes. I mean, I knew it made a significant difference, but once they've got their testosterone down to the. Was it the five nanomoles, is that right? But that's still four, you know, five times more what any female athlete would have. Plus the physical side of it, you know, the fact that the swimmer was 6 foot 4, you know, you don't see many female swimmers at 6 foot 4 and. Or born biological females. And the other thing is, it's a really difficult subject to talk about because of the fear of putting your foot in it and saying the wrong thing. And, you know, and that's not because we're not, you know, we're not anti transgender. And certainly Sharon, from everything I've listened to on her and what we've just, you know, from the interview, yet she actually didn't say it in this interview, but she's got quite several friends that are transgender and friends that are parents of transgender children. So she really isn't anti transgender at all. It's just trying to create fairness in sport.

And I think, yeah, the way that she put it across, which is really interesting, why there hasn't been more scientific research and that hasn't been, and I don't know, the ins and outs of being backed by. By the IAC and things, but it's really interesting because, you know, it's. As she was saying, it's so obvious that that is going to play a part in not being fair within. Within women's sport.

Yeah, yeah, no, it really is. And I think the other thing is that she briefly touched on the categorization of sport. You know, how you don't have a 15 year old competing with a. With an 8 year old and you don't have. And you don't have a. But I think that actually was a really important point, which we didn't go into a Lot. But you know, like in boxing you don't have a heavyweight boxer fighting a bantamweight boxer. And equally, you know, you have, you know, we would be competing again, roughly time wise, we'd be about in the same zone for competing on Ironman, wouldn't it?

We.

But clearly that is a totally different thing because it's a different category. So I think it's. I thought it was really, really interesting. What other bits of what Sharon was talking about got you thinking?

I think like her, her real kind of like wanting to create this kind of like health and access to not it's not just about swimming, but obviously that's her background, that's her passion, that's her profession or, you know, what's her profession and you know, the things that she's getting herself involved in, say in terms of like building, well, wanting to create more pools and get people back into sport and you know, it's not about doing sport actually I should say activity, you know, health and wellness and mental health, you know. So she's really trying to kind of. Yeah, create. Create a healthy nation and kind of provide, you know, provide the access to people. I didn't realize how many pools were just going. I mean that to me was. I didn't realize that was happening at all.

Well, no, I didn't either. I mean, I just knew that the Oakum pool near me had closed, but actually, yeah, 250 during lockdown. I mean that's frightening at a time when actually people need them more than ever. And it was, you know, certainly the one local. To us it just felt like Covid was as the excuse to get rid of an old pool that they quite happily have decommissioned years ago. But yeah, they're getting let off the hook. So I'm definitely going to get on to Rutland county because there is not one public swimming pool in the whole of the county. We've got one that you can pay to be a member of that's owned by Uppingham School, one that's paid by Oakham School. But clearly that makes it very restricted in terms of what fits in around and that's it. So, yeah, I'm going to definitely be introducing Paragon Pools to run and County Council.

That was one of my questions I didn't ask actually about actually what was she talking about? So I'm going to hop on and have a look and see what it is.

They sound really cool, don't they? Yeah. I think you need one for your.

Garden, I was about to say. Exactly. So think especially today, not that I'm complaining about the heat.

But. Yeah, no, I thought it was a really, really good interview and I think it's. I mean, I just. I'd forgotten actually, until she mentioned it, that she was at the Olympics at 13. I mean, that is.

I didn't actually. I didn't realize that until I looked a bit more into it, actually, which is. I can't even imagine what that would feel like. But like, actually, as she said, and I'm sure you can kind of like, kind of remember this as well, I think at that age you almost don't have a fear of doing those things. Like, I think the older you are, the more that you would probably fear failure. Whereas I think at that age it's probably. You don't have. You don't have so much of that, do you?

Yeah, I think that's it. You go in with no expectations and a 13 is like you're. I mean, my youngest daughter's 13. And the idea of her being at the Olympics at this stage just seems be.

To.

Seems absolutely bonkers. Now, admittedly she's not 5 foot 7 as Sharon was, but then, you know, that's not that surprising given that. I know I'm only five foot eight, but. But yeah, I just found that to be amazing. So, yeah, really, really lovely chat with. With Sharon Davis. Anything else you want to pull out from the interview before we let these listeners disappear?

I mean, I totally forgotten she was a gladiator as well. Again, I did my research there, but yeah, it's just amazing and how long she's been involved in the BBC with sport and the Olympics and being at all of those Olympics, whether she was competing or presenting, which is just.

Yeah. And she didn't actually mention it, but in the gladiator she actually did. She had really damaged her knee badly and as a result of that, she's not been able to. I think she really is able to run since because. Yeah, she. She really. I don't know exactly how she damaged it, but she. Yeah, she probably. On the. What was the. Can you remember what. The things where you swang. You swung. Yeah, I did remember what that was called. But. But yeah, anyway. Right, well, on that note, we will. We will leave on the Gladiator note, but thank you for joining me on this podcast. This is going to be a really good episode series of Tribathlon podcast. We've got so many cool people lined up, so. So look out for the next. For the next episode. And in the meantime, if you're enjoying it, please review it, share it, talk about it, tell your mates about it. We don't ever ask for any patronage. We don't ask for. We don't get paid money by any of the sponsors and really chuffed that 33 fuel are joining us as a sponsor going forward for this series, but pay us money. So if all we need for you guys, the best thing you can do to help us is to share it and review it. So until the next time, keep on training. And remember this podcast was sponsored by 33 fuel so rethink your sports nutrition with 33 fuel award winning natural sports nutrition for your performance, health and a fitter future Future. It's the 33 Fuel Fuelosophy. Get yours@33fuel.com and if you use the discount code Tribeathlon or the link in the show notes, you'll get a discount at the checkout. If you enjoyed this podcast, please do review it and share it because it helps other people find what we think is really valuable learning lessons from amazing athletes. So please do that. You can also find the whole back catalogue@tribathlon.com and you can also find out about the Tribe Athlon app which helps people find events find people to train with and enjoy their events through their tribe. So check out tribathlon.com.

Sam.