Biological male wins NYC women's skateboard competition

FPI / June 28, 2022

A 29-year-old biological male who identifies as a trans woman beat a 13-year-old girl to win first place in a women's skateboarding competition in New York City.

Ricci Tres was competing in the Boardr Open, a street skateboarding contest which is split into male and female divisions. Tres won the women's division.

Tres, from Los Angeles, won a prize of $500 while 13-year-old Shiloh Catori of Tampa, Florida came in second and took home $250.

Out of the six competitors, four were under the age of 17, including a 10-year-old girl who came fifth.

Skateboarder Taylor Silverman slammed the victory by Tres. Silverman revealed how she has come in second place several times in recent competitions having been beaten by biological males who identify as women.

"I have been in three different contests with trans women, two of which I placed second," Silverman wrote in an Instagram post.

She told how in one competition organized by Red Bull the transgender winner won thousands of dollars.

"This totaled $5,000 of the prize money meant for female athletes," Silverman noted.

Silverman lost to trans skater Lilian Gallagher during a competition held in May. Since that time she has used her social media presence to campaign for the preservation of women's athletics by calling for competitions to revert to women competing against other biological women and men competing against biological men.

"I reached out to Red Bull and was ignored," Silverman wrote on Instagram. "I am sick of being bullied into silence. What happened was unfair and at the time I was too uncomfortable to speak up. I understand that in today's society even some women think this is acceptable, but I believe in doing the right thing even if it's not the popular thing. I now realize it's really important for me to speak up."

Red Bull, one of the sponsors of the New York City competition, has published articles which strongly-suggest skateboarders who've gone through male puberty — such as Tres — have inherent advantages over female rivals.

A Red Bull skating blog published in 2016 also said that bigger muscles make for a better skateboarder. The Red Bull blog said: 'The core of a skateboarder plays a very crucial role. The group of muscles in the abdominal region, the obliques and part of the back, play a pivotal role in skateboarding performance. Since the sport requires moving over unstable surfaces, the core provides the strength to stabilize the body and balance it."

Male athletes — or transgender women who have gone through male puberty — are more likely to have larger oblique back muscles, which gives them a huge advantage over female competitors.

Last year, Sports Illustrated reported on efforts to popularize skateboarding among women and said that "men's best tricks tend to be more powerful than women's," at the 2020 Olympics, meaning they achieved better scores. The magazine explained that men and women are scored using exactly the same criteria, with no weighting to address the natural disadvantage women face.

Many female skaters' lower levels of strength meant they couldn't pull off the same complex stunts. They tended to achieve lower results, which they admitted to finding disheartening.

Free Press International