Former Olympian Inga Thompson Blasts NOW for Calling Women’s Sports Advocates ‘White Supremacists’

Former Olympic cyclist Inga Thompson ripped the National Organization for Women (NOW) for calling the Title IX lawsuit filed by a group of former female athletes “white supremacist patriarchy at work.”

In an interview with Fox New Digital, Thompson sounded off after the “women’s rights” group tweeted a statement accusing the women of white supremacy.

“Repeat after us: Weaponizing womanhood against other women is white supremacist patriarchy at work,” the post read. “Making people believe there isn’t enough space for trans women in sports is white supremacist patriarchy at work.”

Riley Gaines and other female athletes are suing the NCAA for violating their Title IX rights by allowing transgender swimmer Lia Thomas to compete against them and utilize their changing facilities.

“They’re all attempts at silencing women by throwing these accusations out there,” Thompson said of NOW’s post. “When you get to the root cause of this, we are none of that. We are none of that. It is simply women asking for our sex-separated rights.”

Thomas won the Division I freestyle event at the 2022 NCAA Championships. He also tied Gaines in the 200-meter, but Thomas was given the trophy despite the tie.

Still, Thompson sees the trans infiltration of women’s sports as being about more than just trophies or medals.

Inga Thompson, #49 of the USA, speaks to a television reporter after the Women’s Road Race in Sant Sadurní d’Anoia near Barcelona on July 26, 1992, during the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. (David Madison/Getty Images)

“It goes deeper than just the medals,” Thompson explained. “It’s taken away opportunities for women. And we still don’t have 50% of the opportunities out there. Men still have far more opportunities in sports than women do. And so the few opportunities that we have, they want those too.”

Since Thomas’ championship run at the NCAA tournament, the world’s sports governing bodies have grappled with how to accommodate trans athletes. When it comes to the Olympics, where Thompson competed in 1984, 1988, and 1992, the former cyclist sees the IOC’s policy of allowing individual sports to determine their own rules for admitting trans athletes as ineffective.

“They basically said that inclusion was more important than fairness, and they made their decision based on inclusion being more important than fairness to women,” she said. “I think everybody looks from leadership at the top with the IOC. But the IOC has proven that they’re not showing leadership as far as the safety and protecting of women in sports.

We need to be able to discuss biological reality, and we need to be able to have truth, and words need to have a meaning. And they’re trying to take the word woman away from us.”