‘That honor was stolen from me. I want it back.’ Female athlete breaks silence after losing championship to biological male 

No more silence from Minna Svärd, the first woman to lose a collegiate medal to a biological male. 

Nearly six years after losing the women’s 400-meter hurdles at the NCAA Division II championships to Cece Telfer, a senior at Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire, Svärd is speaking out about the experience. 

The Swedish runner, who was a sophomore at East Texas A&M University at the time, lost the race by about two seconds. 

“That made me the first collegiate woman to be told her victory was worth less than a man’s feelings,” she wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. “I cried a lot that day—not because I lost, but because of how I lost. I also knew I wasn’t the only victim. Every time a male athlete enters a female competition, a woman gets cut from the roster to make room.” 

Svärd noted that Telfer competed in men’s outdoor track during 2016 and 2017 and ranked 390th in NCAA Division II in the same event. She also pointed out that women’s hurdles are nine inches shorter than men’s and, even with that difference, there’s still about a 10% achievement gap between the best men and women in the sport. 

Although she called the NCAA’s recent trans athlete ban a good step, the runner also thinks the college athletics body should recognize the female athletes who otherwise would have won events if not for transgender athletes beating them. 

“I don’t expect I’ll ever be profiled in a fawning magazine feature,” she wrote. “But I did accomplish one thing that will always fill me with pride: In 2019 I was the fastest female 400-meter hurdler at any NCAA Division II school. It’s been five years since that honor was stolen from me. I want it back.” 

Former women’s tennis star Martina Navratilova voiced support for Svärd on X, writing, “It’s so obviously wrong and unfair.” 

Telfer is one of two known male transgender-identifying athletes to win an NCAA women’s national championship. The other was University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, who won the 500-yard freestyle event at the NCAA Division I women’s swimming national championship in 2022. 

Thomas also tied University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines for fifth place in the 200m freestyle at the national championship meet, prompting her to speak out about it. 

Gaines has since become a prominent national voice for fairness in women’s sports. She was behind President Donald Trump when he signed his executive order protecting women’s sports in February, and has had legislation named in her honor in West Virginia and Georgia to keep men out of women’s sports and private spaces such as locker rooms and bathrooms. 

Svärd lamented she herself was too passive, calling herself “a people pleaser,” which she labeled “a stereotypical female quality that trans activists often exploit to suppress dissent.” 

When she finally posted about the race one year later, Telfer alerted his supporters who promptly denounced Svärd as a “transphobe” and racist, complete with harassment and threats. 

“Telfer went on to write a book and was profiled by the New York Times magazine in a lengthy article titled ‘For My People,’” Svärd wrote, though she may have had the last laugh.

“That dream collapsed in 2021 when he failed a testosterone test.”