Sharron Davies and Caitlyn Jenner on sport’s greatest debate

When a US athlete named Bruce Jenner took decathlon gold at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, a virtually unknown 13-year-old swimmer called Sharron Davies was making her debut for Great Britain with dreams that she, too, might one day stand on the ultimate sporting podium.

Davies was good enough to win gold four years later but had to settle for silver, cheated into second place by the drug-enhanced East German swimmer Petra Schneider.

Davies and Jenner’s paths have not crossed and they have never spoken, but a 21st-century version of sporting injustice has brought them together and led them to agree to have a frank conversation: the issue of biological men competing as women.

They are coming at it from rather different places. In 2015 Jenner, by then best known as one of the reality stars of the TV series Keeping Up with the Kardashians, transitioned from Bruce into Caitlyn, becoming the most high-profile trans woman in the world. Davies meanwhile pursued the ex-athlete’s oft-trodden career path of working as a commentator and TV presenter, and found a new generation of fans as Amazon, one of the gladiators in the ITV game show.

Both have been strident in their criticism of trans women entering certain female events, after the issue was brought into sharp focus in 2022 by Lia Thomas, a 6ft 4in trans woman who won a national universities women’s swimming title in the US, having competed as a male (with less success) until two years earlier.

For Davies, the sight of young girls being denied podium places by biological males takes her straight back to Moscow in 1980, when she was cheated out of gold in the 400m individual medley. The East Germans won all but two of the gold medals in women’s swimming events that year and despite subsequent admissions that performances were influenced by doping – and even though Schneider herself said on German television that her record should be scratched – the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has never stripped them of their medals. Schneider remains listed as the gold winner for that year on the official Olympic Games website.

Today Davies makes the case for protecting female sport for biological females in her book Unfair Play, which she will be discussing at the Oxford Literary Festival on 21 March. In Jenner, she has found a powerful ally. Last year Jenner launched Fairness First, a political action committee that has the aim of keeping female sports for those born female and of fighting what Jenner calls ‘the radical gender ideology’.

Like Davies, she has picked up plenty of enemies as a result, but these are two single-minded people with a track record of doing whatever it takes to achieve their goal, and the haters of social media are not about to knock them off course.

The Telegraph has arranged for the two of them to speak for the first time, and the result is a fascinating conversation during which they discuss not only trans women in sport, but also the fundamental issue of whether a trans woman is a woman, as well as political boycotts, the joys of grandparenting – and the joys of tequila.

I meet Davies in a hotel near her Wiltshire home, where the plan is to link her up with Jenner via a Zoom call to California. Davies, elegant in a grey woollen dress, orders a cappuccino and half nibbles on a biscuit as we wait for our guest to join us from Malibu. It does not start well, owing to technology glitches, but finally my mobile phone rings on the table in front of us, I hit the loudspeaker button and a familiar voice calls out: ‘Oh my God, did we do this?!’ Davies laughs with relief.

Within a matter of seconds Davies, 61, and Jenner, 74, have established a rapport, chatting about mutual friends like Daley Thompson, the man Jenner beat into 18th place in the 1976 Games. Thompson, who went on to win gold in the decathlon at Moscow in 1980 and Los Angeles in 1984, remains a close friend of Jenner to this day.

‘I know you know Daley very well,’ Davies says, ‘and although I was very young when you won your medal, I was there, I was 13.’

Jenner replies: ‘No way! Oh my God you were 13? So that was your first Olympics then?’

‘Yes, up against the might of the East Germans, and pretty much all of my swimming career was up against the East Germans.’

The IOC failed dismally to stop Communist East Germany’s use of state-sponsored doping and, with a few months to go to this summer’s Paris 2024 Games, it has shown similar weakness over the issue of whether trans women should be allowed to enter female events, by leaving the decision up to individual sporting bodies.

While the international governing bodies for swimming, cycling and athletics have ruled that no one born male who has transitioned after the age of 12 will be allowed to compete as a female, other sports – including some combat sports – have made no such decision, meaning trans women who transitioned after puberty could be admitted to female events now and in the future.

‘Sharron, I’m trying to think what’s happened to the world right now,’ Jenner begins, ‘this woke ideology that somehow we’ve gotten ourselves into is just destroying so many things. And especially in sports, you remember back then that the women had to take a saliva test to have their DNA checked, right?’

‘Yeah we did,’ says Davies. ‘I have a little card from ’76 that was a sex screen, and it was so simple, just a little swab to the inside of your mouth once in a lifetime because humans cannot change their biological sex.’

Jenner tells her: ‘In ’76 I was in the weights room five days before I had to compete, my last lifting workout, and this East German distance thrower came in. She was huge. Huge! Two guys with her, she out-lifted me so bad it was a joke, and I’m thinking, “Wait a second I’ve gotta try to win the Games in five days and the chicks are out-lifting me”.’

Suspicions that some of the East German women were actually men was the reason for chromosome tests being used (the Princess Royal, competing on horseback, was the only female competitor not to have to submit to a sex test) but a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, mandatory sex testing was dropped.

Those on the most radical side of trans rights believe trans women should be able to self-identify and compete as women, arguing that hormone therapy reverses the advantages of male physiology. But Jenner cries humbug.

‘I’m coming from the other side, OK,’ she says. ‘[I’m] someone who went through a complete change and I can still hit a golf ball 280 yards. I know the effects of [female] hormones on the body, it does have a little bit of an effect but it’s not a major effect, and certainly not enough to make it even.

‘I have been pushing here to go back to chromosome tests. If they continue down this road it will be pretty much the end of women’s sport as we know it.’

Davies, too, wants to see the return of DNA testing, and believes the only answer is to have a protected female classification for biological females and an open category to replace the male category, which trans women could enter. Jenner agrees, and expresses what for many trans women would be an incendiary belief – that men who transition to women have to accept compromise.

‘We have a trans girl trying to make it in the LPGA [Ladies Professional Golf Association],’ says Jenner. ‘I have nothing against her, I wish her nothing but the best life in the world, but you have to realise that when you do transition there are limitations. And most importantly you have to respect other people. You have to respect women, OK? I have enormous respect for women and what they’re able to do with their lives. I would never do anything to try to upset that balance because I am different, you know?’

Jenner is gloriously matter of fact about her body and both her sex and gender, and what she regards as the facts of life as a trans woman.

‘Let me explain – I am biologically male, OK? I’m XY. There’s nothing I can do to change that. If you believe in gender dysphoria, and I think most people do realise it’s not a disease, it’s a mental condition, just like some people are left-handed and some people are right-handed, it’s kind of the way you’re born and I’ve dealt with it my entire life.

‘I consider myself a trans person, I am still genetically male, I changed all of my ID right down to my birth certificate so technically yes, I am female, but on the other hand I know I’m not.’

A lot of trans women would disagree with Jenner’s stance that she is not a real woman, surely? ‘Oh they would. Honestly they would, because they keep saying, “Oh, I’m a real woman, I’m a real woman” and I’m going, “No, you’re not.” I will use your preferred pronouns, I will treat you as a female, you can run and dress and do whatever you want, I have nothing against that, it’s fine, but biologically you’re still male.’

Jenner has no idea what proportion of trans people would agree with her, but guesses that: ‘The ones online would probably disagree with me and all the rest would probably agree… you have the ones that want to get the clicks and they will be brutal with you. I feel sorry for those people who have that much hate inside them.’

I ask whether her memories of winning gold are in any way diminished by the fact that she was a man at the time. It is a bold question but I feel sure Jenner will not take offence. ‘Bruce. Did. Great!’ Jenner says with relish.

‘Yes he did,’ laughs Davies, ‘and you were a sexy dude for a young girl like me!’

‘I hold him in high esteem,’ continues Jenner. ‘I am extraordinarily proud of everything he was able to accomplish in his life. I’m extraordinarily proud of Bruce being a great father to 10 children. Every one of my kids has lived extraordinarily productive lives. They’re good citizens, they’re good people, they’re good parents. I’m proud of that section of my life, there was just always this thing inside that I just couldn’t get rid of.

‘I always used to think of it as, everybody saw Bruce, and little Caitlyn was always just living inside. Now Caitlyn has a chance to live and little Bruce now lives inside. I love all those memories, I’ve had a great life. I wouldn’t change a thing.’

Those 10 children came from three marriages: Burt and Cassandra by Jenner’s first wife Chrystie Scott; Brandon and Brody by second wife Linda Thompson; and Kendall and Kylie by third wife Kris Kardashian, through whom Jenner also has four stepchildren, Kourtney, Kim, Khloé and Rob Kardashian.

From 2007 until 2021 the Jenner-Kardashian family found worldwide fame by living their lives on camera in Keeping Up with the Kardashians and, when Bruce transitioned to Caitlyn, through the spin-off series I Am Cait.

It would be easy to assume that she might envy the ease with which people living with gender dysphoria can now access help and transition at a young age, but the opposite turns out to be true.

‘Here’s the deal,’ she says. ‘I would not want to grow up in today’s society. Our society that we grew up in, we had the luxury of being naive. We didn’t know everything. I couldn’t even find a therapist, I was in my 30s before I could find a therapist, the first person that I ever talked to about it, and it was ridiculously difficult finding someone. Today they just go online, couple of clicks, and boom you find a hundred therapists.’

But is that a bad thing necessarily? ‘Now, if I was growing up today… and I had my maths teacher in sixth grade talking about gender ideology and I would be sitting there in the classroom and thinking, “Holy crap, they’re talking about me!” and then they’d send you to the school shrink and they’d say, “Well, you know, you’re gender dysphoric and you need to correct that right now and you need to get on hormone blockers,” and I’d say, “Is that what I need to do?” and it would have ruined my whole life. Ruined it!

‘There’d be no sports, no Olympics, I had wonderful families, wonderful kids, I have had a phenomenal, phenomenal life. I have no regrets whatsoever.’

So what would she say to trans campaigners who might suggest she would have had an even better life if she had been able to transition sooner? ‘No. Totally wrong! No! I had my life and I had a phenomenal life. I transitioned when it was the right time for me.’

She adds: ‘I’m just living my life with gender dysphoria the best I possibly can, that’s all. And enjoying life and enjoying my kids and my grandchildren. I kinda went crazy in that department, I have – get this one – 23 grandchildren and number 24 is in the oven.’

Davies tells her: ‘Well, I have my little granddaughter on a Friday and it’s my favourite day of the week.’

‘I know, I’m very blessed,’ says Jenner. ‘My whole life revolves around my kids and a little bit of work here and there, go out and fight the battles that need to be fought and live a good life.’

Davies has three children, two of them by her second husband Derek Redmond, a former Olympic sprinter, and one with her third husband Tony Kingston, a pilot. She has two grandchildren. Although she no longer swims (‘My shoulders are knackered these days,’ she admits), she cycles and works out, and looks as fit as she did in her prime.

While Jenner is happy to drift into conversations about family and her own childhood, Davies is focused on the issue of sporting injustices. ‘We have such a small piece of the cake,’ she says, claiming that 98 per cent of sponsorship money in sport goes to men, ‘and now we’re supposed to move over for what in most cases is mediocre male athletes who are identifying as females who just think that they have the right to take our opportunities away.’

‘Let me ask you a question,’ says Jenner. ‘Why is it that the women are always the ones that have to kind of give in? Can you imagine if this was happening to, let’s say in the men’s division and Elon Musk came up with a cyber robot that could just run like hell and said, “Oh, it’s really human, let’s enter it in the men’s division” – they would never let it happen!’

‘Men don’t put up with it,’ replies Davies. ‘So whether that’s a new type of swimsuit, whether that’s Oscar Pistorius who wants to run in the Olympics and might actually beat all the men because he’s got his blades on, it gets stopped extremely quickly.’

‘More women need to stand up like you,’ says Jenner. ‘Current athletes, retired athletes. We had a thing on the news last night, someone who identified as a female playing basketball and grabbed the ball and yanked it like hell, the [biological] girl falls to the ground and hurts herself. Parents need to stand up against this woke ideology. If that was my daughter my ass would… I would have taken care of things.’

Paris will be the 13th Olympics that Davies has attended as a competitor or a pundit; Jenner has been to many Games as a commentator, but seems unsure whether she will be in Paris. Trans athletes are not, of course, the only controversy that Paris will have to deal with, and Davies raises the subject of whether Russia should be allowed to send a team. On this, however, she and Jenner disagree.

‘I hate that politics is involved in sports,’ says Jenner, who was a witness to the Black September terrorist attack on the Israeli team at the Munich 1972 Olympics. ‘I was in the next building in 1972, I saw one of the terrorists, that famous picture of the guy standing in the doorway on the balcony, he’s got a gun in his hand, he’s got that hat on, I saw him. I peeped over the balcony and there he was, and what happened that day, it p—sed me off so bad, you know, how dare they come and screw up our Games, so I’m not in favour of any political statements at the Games. We’re there for the glory of sport.’

Davies is unconvinced. ‘I might say that a country like Russia that invades a sovereign country, that continually dopes, having been a victim of exactly that same thing with East Germany, I know that the only thing that would stop that is to remove Russia. I can’t imagine being Ukrainian and being asked to race next to a Russian.’

But Jenner stands her ground. ‘We were both around in 1980 when [America] boycotted the Games because of the Soviet Union’s involvement in Afghanistan. I’ve asked people about the 1980 Games, “Do you know why we boycotted the Games in 1980?” Everybody goes, “No, I don’t remember”. That was it? Here we are years later, did no good.’

And with that, Jenner suddenly announces she has to go. As Davies reflects on the conversation, she harks back to ‘the best Olympics’ of all – London 2012, a time when Britain was a less angry place to be.

‘We were proud,’ she says, ‘proud of our athletes, proud of our country, we should be allowed to be proud of our country because somehow at the moment that’s being beaten out of us. And I’m extremely proud to be British.

‘We did an incredible job in 2012. It’s the last time I can remember this country being really happy.’

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