To the extent Lia Thomas has an advantage it’s probably due to her height and longer arms and legs. There was an eye-opening article in the New Yorker Magazine recently that puts the lie to many of the criticisms. One thing that has been often repeated is that Lia would shatter Katie Ledecky‘s records. In point of fact she has not come within five seconds of Katie‘s best. A huge difference in swimming. They noted that Lia’s current success is mostly due to the relatively lackluster nature of the competition currently. Compared to the all-time best swimmers Lia is fairly average. Plus any strength advantage she might’ve had originally is long gone. Read the article. It looks at the facts objectively, not the vitriolic nonsense.

By way of comparison look at tennis. The Williams sisters and before them Martina Navratilova, dominated. They had huge size advantages and over powered the more normal sized women. Did we criticize them? No. If you took away birth origin, they had the same height and strength advantages. We applaud their success, we do not criticize them.