On August 19, in a hotel lobby in Budapest, Hungary, professional runner Nikki Hiltz opened a text from their mother to find a quote often attributed to Anaïs Nin: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Hiltz’s mother had sent an inspirational quote before every race since Hiltz ran for the University of Arkansas. But Nin’s words still felt special to the 29-year-old middle-distance runner, U.S. national champion, and American record holder—and so did the day.

In just a few hours, Hiltz would compete in the 1,500-meter semifinal at the World Athletics Championships. Sitting in the lobby beside partner and fellow runner Emma Gee, they began to tear up. “I don’t know why I’m crying,” Hiltz said as Gee hugged them close. But Hiltz knew exactly why.

March of 2021 was the last time Hiltz had remained tight in a bud. That month they came out as transgender and nonbinary and began using they/them pronouns. (Hiltz continues to compete in the women’s category.) Two years later, in June 2023, they became the U.S. national champion in the 1,500-meter race and, just 13 days after that, ran a 4:16:35 mile at the Monaco Diamond League, an American record. “The year 2021 was when I made the decision that I couldn’t hide anymore,” Hiltz says. “But maybe there was a two-year delay in the blossom.”

In Budapest, Hiltz took the starting line clad in red, white, and blue. Beside them, some of the best athletes in the world blew out nervous air, shook their legs, and stared stoically forward. When the camera landed on Hiltz, they waved and blew a kiss, a tattooed arm catching the sun. During the final lap of the race, Hiltz fell behind, finishing in 4:00:84—their second-fastest 1,500-meter, but not good enough to advance to the final.

“I’m still pretty proud of myself,” Hiltz says. Before the World Championships, they’d decided on a goal much bigger than a podium finish. “I wanted to go to the World Champs, compete, and be that representation,” Hiltz says. “There’s nothing like sports. Look at us athletes. We’re ambassadors for our countries. We love each other, we root for each other, and we’re from all over the world.”

The power of representation isn’t lost on Hiltz, especially as a trans person in 2023. This year, a slew of anti-trans legislation was pushed around the U.S., each new bill landing like a gut punch to the LGBTQ+ community. By May of 2023, at least 520 anti-LGBTQ+ bills had been introduced in state legislatures, according to the advocacy group Human Rights Campaign.

Despite the menacing sociopolitical atmosphere, Hiltz has persevered—and is far from alone in doing so. In July of 2023, Quinn, a mononymous 27-year-old Canadian soccer player, became the first out transgender and nonbinary athlete to play in the FIFA World Cup. It was not the first time Quinn made history on the world stage. In summer 2021, they became the first out, trans-nonbinary athlete to compete in the Olympics, and the first to win a gold medal.

After the World Cup, Quinn helped launch the See Them, Be Them initiative, providing mentorship for teen girls and gender-diverse youth. The goal: to inspire young athletes, especially at an age when 82 percent of Canadian girls drop out of soccer. “We need more opportunities for girls and gender-
diverse soccer players to see their future in the sport,” Quinn wrote.

Both Quinn and Hiltz are careful to point out that their experiences do not represent those of all trans folks. “I compete as the sex I was assigned at birth, but I don’t want to be the poster child for every trans person,” says Hiltz. “If you are a trans woman, and you want to compete in the women’s category, I am so going to support you.”

Whether or not transgender women should be allowed to compete in the women’s category has become a cultural flash point. In 2023, a 27-year-old cyclist named Austin Killips became the target of anti-trans ire. On April 30, she became the first trans woman cyclist to win a professional stage race sanctioned by the UCI, road cycling’s international governing body. Killips’s win spurred criticism from media outlets and social media warriors alike. In response, the UCI banned trans women who transitioned after puberty from competing in the women’s category at any UCI-sanctioned event.

To a policy that effectively ended her career, Killips responded with broader concern. “I won’t be able to sleep at night if I’m not fighting for the next woman who deserves a shot at everything this sport has given me,” she wrote in her Substack newsletter, Estro Junkie. When șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű spoke with Killips in late June, she quoted a passage from Simone Weil reminding her “to respond to criticism in a way consistent with the world you want to see,” Killips said. “You can’t impart harm and expect it to resolve a conflict.”

The prospect of that future world remains uncertain. For Killips, Hiltz, and Quinn, it’s impossible to know what the policy landscape will look like in the coming years. What they do know is that sports provided a sense of belonging from an early age. They want other kids to feel that, too.

The post Against Great Odds, Trans Athletes Persevere appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

At the start line of the Falmouth Road Race in August, a smattering of languages cuts through an otherwise monolingual field. A hum of nervous chatter blends with the rhythm of the Atlantic Ocean, drumming the Cape Cod shore. Then, Spanish, and lots of it.

Thirty runners stand at the ready, clad in black singlets with red equal signs across their chests. These athletes are all part of , a nonprofit running organization composed mostly of immigrants. A few wrap their arms around each other. Some laugh. Others shake out their legs. While any onlooker might notice camaraderie in this crew, they won’t understand the full extent of these runners’ bonds. Many Stride for Stride athletes would do anything for each other. In some cases, they’d even give a kidney.

The Beginning of a Dream

Stride for Stride was founded by Tom O’Keefe, not an immigrant himself but, rather, a 50-year-old social impact entrepreneur with a background in business development, known for his viral Twitter account, . O’Keefe started BostonTweet to uplift local businesses during the 2008 recession. Such was the mindset with which he proceeded to co-found Flutter in 2015—an organization that empowered folks to donate to local charities—and launch various other social impact projects.

O’Keefe also brought this mindset to his first starting line. Upon completing the seven-mile Falmouth Road Race in 2018, O’Keefe was struck by the feeling of invincibility that comes after pushing one’s body across the finish. But alongside glee was a less positive feeling, a disappointment of the high registration cost, and the race participants’ overwhelming whiteness. He sought to make road races more diverse and accessible. Later that year, he launched Stride for Stride, with the goal to buy race bibs for immigrant, BIPOC, and low-income runners.

‘We’re Part of a Family’

In 2018, Estuardo Calel, a runner from Guatemala and an acquaintance of O’Keefe’s from the Boston running scene, became the first Stride for Stride sponsored athlete. Calel shared news of the nonprofit with his friend and fellow runner, Jessica Colindres, also from Guatemala.

Colindres, a marathoner, preschool teacher, and mother of two, often couldn’t attend her dream races due to the high cost of registration. After contacting O’Keefe, Colindres and her husband, Douglas, became the second and third sponsored athletes, and today, Colindres has completed 65 races, including 12 marathons and 24 half-marathons. Before joining the team, Colindres and her husband “might be able to buy one race bib, not two,” she says. “Now, we run together more, we run in more races, and we feel more freedom. And we’ve made very close friends.”

Today, Stride for Stride sponsors 368 runners from 26 countries and has spent $146,705 in bib purchases. The largest contingent of runners reside in Boston, although the team extends to New York City, Miami, and other cities in the U.S.

“There are runners on the team who I don’t know personally, and yet somehow we still feel connected,” says Karen Mejia, a Boston-based runner, social worker, and mother of two, originally from Honduras. Local runners will often host out-of-town teammates in their homes.

“When [teammates] come to Boston from New Jersey and New York, we feel like we’re part of a family. We take care of each other.”

RELATED: Running the Boston Marathon for the First Time

Over the past five years, O’Keefe has supported a growing roster of athletes through a combination of financial sources, the most lucrative being charity partnerships with the New York City Marathon and the Boston Marathon. Stride for Stride has also received grants from the Boston Athletic Association and REI (the latter of which “really helped us get through the pandemic,” O’Keefe recounts). Individuals can donate online, and some organizations give race proceeds or free bibs to the nonprofit. O’Keefe built a structure positioned for growth, while the runners built something more akin to a family than a team.

“A lot of immigrants come to this country totally alone. They don’t know anyone, and they don’t speak the language,” says O’Keefe. “I can’t imagine how scary that must be.” To find a community of people with “your passions, who speak your language, and who understand your struggles
It’s beyond what I can understand.”

Although he cannot fully understand the depth of these runners’ bonds, O’Keefe is bound by them. He runs with the Boston-based athletes every week, races in his Stride for Stride singlet, participates in team traditions like the post-Falmouth bonfire, and commits his life and career to Stride for Stride. The nonprofit has become O’Keefe’s full-time job, and the runners are his extended family. (In 2022, Calel asked O’Keefe and his wife, Bridget, to be godparents to his twins.)

Finding a Match

In 2020, O’Keefe was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease (CKD). O’Keefe needed a kidney, or he’d have to go on dialysis, a treatment during which the average lifespan is 5 to 10 years. Soon, he had 10 percent kidney function, and was wrecked by fatigue—the main symptom of CKD—so severe that he’d sleep for two hours every afternoon and fall asleep by 9:30 P.M.

, 90 percent of people with kidney disease don’t know they have it. Not everyone experiences the telltale sign, “proteinuria,” or foamy urine. Plus, the main symptom of CKD is fatigue, easily attributed to other ailments. O’Keefe urges anyone with proteinuria, unusual fatigue, or other symptoms to get checked by their doctor.

When Boston-based Stride for Stride athlete, Jorge Rosales, heard that a family member was rejected as a donor and O’Keefe still needed a kidney, he called Tom immediately.

“I have one for you,” said the 44-year-old father of three and car mechanic from El Salvador. Rosales contacted the hospital to begin the testing process. So did Colindres. Soon afterwards, Mejia did, too. For Rosales, the decision was a no-brainer. During the early months of the pandemic, he watched as O’Keefe launched another donation-based program, , which purchases supermarket gift cards for families struggling to buy groceries.

“I saw everything Tom was doing to help people during the pandemic,” says Rosales. “He was always worried about [Stride for Stride runners], asking us how we were doing. He’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. I’d love to help with anything he needs.”

When reflecting on her decision to undergo the vetting process, Colindres expresses similar sentiments. “I cannot explain how I see Tom and [his wife], Bridget. There are no words.” Colindres’s voice quivers, and she looks up at the ceiling. She throws her hands in front of her face in a T-shape. Time out.

By August, 2023, Rosales had undergone five months of testing, including two MRIs, a CT scan, countless blood tests, and meetings with social workers to confirm his wish to donate. One last test would decide whether he was a match.

In early October, he received a call from the hospital: the final test result. Hands shaking, he called O’Keefe to deliver the news that would either save his life or make it markedly more difficult. The two padded their conversation in pleasantries—the weather, the miles run that morning, the races upcoming that fall—but eventually, Rosales’s voice broke to a more serious tone: “The doctors called and I’m 100 percent compatible,” he said. O’Keefe released a breath like a deflating balloon, heavy and forceful against his lips.

Action from Intention

According to a administered by the Running Industry Diversity Coalition (RIDC), 93 percent of running organizations express a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, but only 70 percent of these organizations have DEI goals, 41 percent track their progress, and 14 percent publish their goals for the public. If this data provides any indication, far too many running organizations consider inclusion within the confines of an Instagram square or pithy marketing campaign.

Stride for Stride, however, is powerful because it rejects such a narrow approach. It also rejects the notion that DEI can be a bandwagon, that companies can hop on in 2020, then hop off when a trendier ride comes along. Stride for Stride serves as a reminder that efforts at inclusion must be seen, heard, and felt by the folks they seek to serve most directly. They must question norms and constantly strive for better.

On Saturdays, the Boston-area Stride for Stride contingent gathers for a long run. Together, “we all speak Spanish; we speak at the same time,” says Mejia. “So, I feel [bad] for Tom.” (O’Keefe claims to not speak Spanish very well but plans to take more lessons while recovering from his transplant.)

“It’s fine, it’s totally fine,” O’Keefe interjects, laughing. For their non-Spanish speaking teammate, runners seldom feel the need to translate. Which is to say, runners know that Stride for Stride belongs to them.

RELATED: Meet the People Making Running More Inclusive

Still, something else burgeons beneath Stride for Stride’s intended outcomes—the languages spoken, bibs purchased, and charity dollars earned. There’s a unique closeness that comes from pushing oneself to physical limits beside a teammate, falling so deep into the pain cave that one’s labored breath becomes inseparable from the other’s. Such bonds are often intrinsic to the culture of high school and college sports teams, but can too often be lost after adulthood. Stride for Stride reminds of one of the simplest elements of the sport, the “I’d give a kidney” sort of bond running can create.

In early January 2024, both O’Keefe and Rosales are set to undergo surgery—Rosales to lose a kidney, and O’Keefe to gain one. When asked how he is feeling, Rosales breaks into a wide grin.

“I’m excited!” he exclaims. As Rosales speaks over Zoom, he sits at home in Boston, a picture of himself, his wife, and their three kids on the wall behind him. Below the frame lies a cursive scrawl that spells “family,” a word that spans far beyond the five people in the photo, thanks to Stride for Stride.

“[Rosales] keeps saying he’s excited, which shocks me,” O’Keefe says. “He’s doing this amazing thing, taking an organ out of his body, and he’s excited?!”

Once the two recover, O’Keefe and Rosales both plan to race a marathon, side-by-side, Rosales’s kidney filtering the very blood that pumps through his teammate’s veins.

The post He Built a Community of Runners. One Athlete Donated a Kidney in Return. appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

“I’m only taking press opportunities if we talk about Simone Weil essays,” says Austin Killips, referencing the 20th century French intellectual and activist. It’s a joke, but not entirely. Although Killips has recently captured much public attention as a prominent transgender athlete, the 27-year-old cyclist prefers to keep a low profile—and would much rather talk about her favorite philosopher than herself.

On April 30th, Killips made history: she became the first transgender woman cyclist to win a professional road stage race sanctioned by the sport’s international governing body, the Union Cycliste International, when she was victorious at the 254-mile, five-day Tour of the Gila in New Mexico. Killips crossed the final finish line with her mouth wide open and fists raised in celebration. But soon afterwards, she faced an onslaught of online attacks, both via Twitter and news outlets like the New York Post and OutKick.

Notably, tennis player, Martina Navratilova, took to Twitter, expressing her disapproval and misgendering Killips in the process. “Women’s sports is NOT THE PLACE for trans identified male athletes,” she wrote.

But Killips was well within her right to compete. Until recently, the UCI, cycling’s global governing body, stated that a transgender woman may compete if she has suppressed her testosterone to 2.5nmol/L for a 24-month period. Killips abided by these rules, but that didn’t stop her adversaries from speaking out. While the UCI originally defended Killips, the governing body changed its tone after the race concluded, announcing plans to revisit the rules later in the summer. On July 14th, the UCI released a new policy: starting on July 17th, transgender women who transitioned after puberty will be banned from competing in the women’s category at all UCI-sanctioned events.

In response to a policy that will halt her career, Killips stayed calm and thoughtful. “I expected to feel more defeated in the wake of this but I keep coming back to how much joy I’ve found in cycling,” she wrote in her Substack newsletter, Estro Junkie. “I guess what complicates all of this is the sense that it is fallout from something I did.”

To Chris Mosier, a multi-sport athlete and well-known transgender rights advocate, the impetus behind the UCI’s tone-change is clear: “The UCI is buckling to political pressure and sending a message that transgender people are not welcomed in the sport of cycling,” he says. Notably, the UCI’s policy on trans male cyclists has engendered no debate: trans men may compete upon providing written and signed declaration of gender identity to the UCI Medical Manager, a rule in-line with the policies of other sports.  To Mosier, the outsized response to Killips’ win sends an obvious message: trans athletes may compete, but not win. “Trans athletes train hard just like any other athlete, and if a policy allows us entry, it should also allow us to do the very best we can on that day,” he says.

For Killips, and all elite transgender athletes, the landscape is rapidly changing and continually uncertain. When I met with her over Zoom, at the end of June, the UCI had yet to release their newest policy ban on trans women, and she still felt “cautiously optimistic” that they would uphold her right to compete in the women’s field.

“It’s certainly difficult and confusing to feel like the living test case of the rules,” she says. As Killips spoke, she sat at home in Rhode Island, clad in a trucker hat, geometric earrings, and a muted orange button-down, her hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. It was late-morning in Rhode Island, and a soft glow came through the window. When she’s not traveling, she lives in a house owned by Nice Bikes, a nonprofit with the mission to support women and LGBTQIA+ professional cyclists. (Killips has historically received financial support as one of six Nice Bikes athletes). The rent-free lodging is not part of any contract but, rather, a testament to the relationship Killips has built with her team. It’s a living arrangement reminiscent of a sitcom: a ceramics studio in the basement and a revolving door of professional cyclists and artists who love each other like family.

Throughout our conversation, Killips brought a philosophical bent to each topic, whether it was cycling, media discourse, or queer coming-of-age. Often, she began speaking on one topic and drifted to another: a discussion of policies affecting transgender folks led her to ruminate on state-sanctioned harm against vulnerable communities, which led her to reference various books and films. Killips thinks deeply about the way people of marginalized identities are perceived and politicized against their will, and also about the solidarity that exists in spite of all of that. “We find ourselves in other people,” Killips says. “That’s why death and loss are so destabilizing, and also why being in a community has this incredible power to recreate and shape us.” To her, the recent discourse on transgender athletes cannot be understood in isolation from history. And yet, she never anticipated she would play such a central role within it.

After receiving her GED, she moved to Chicago to attend Shimer College, a liberal arts school with a nontraditional approach to higher education, known for accepting promising students without high school degrees or standardized test scores. To Killips, Shimer was a “magical island of misfit toys.” There, she found a community of rigorous thinkers who were “constantly talking about everything they were reading. Kids wouldn’t shut up about [German philosopher] Hegel,” she recalls, smiling. It was a community that affirmed all parts of Killips–both her gender identity and penchant for deep, philosophical inquiry. “I remember leaving school feeling grounded, and in a much better [mental] place than when I started,” she says. At the same time, she took a job at a local bike shop and bought a fixed-gear bike, which she used for transport and enjoyment. “The bike was an Unknown Combat,” she recalls, scrolling through iPhone photos to jog her memory. “I don’t even know if that brand exists anymore,” she adds, laughing.

After her second year of college in 2017, Shimer closed and integrated with another school. So, Killips dropped out and traveled to Portland, Oregon, where she enrolled in trade school for bike mechanics and began training more seriously as a cyclist. When she returned to Chicago at the end of the summer of 2017 she got a job at another bike shop, and upgraded to a Felt Bike, more appropriate for her enhanced mileage and speed.  In 2019, her friend and fellow mechanic, Lauren Wiscomb, encouraged her to enter a cyclocross race, the Half Acre Cycling’s CX Eliminator in Chicago. The format—cyclists race laps on grass, mud, and dirt, and must often dismount and run—appealed to Killips. She entered 21 more races in 2019, including the Illinois State Cyclocross Championships.

To an onlooker, Killips’ rise to competitive cycling may appear fast. In just her first season, 2019, she won eleven cyclocross races. And yet the roots of her cycling career can be traced back to when a teenage Austin donned a pair of rollerblades and discovered the unique sensation of pushing her body in the outdoors. It’s the same passion and love for the training grind that drives her today. “When I’m doing intervals or racing, I think about how special it is to be engaged in a process that is so physically and psychologically taxing that any problems of the material world melt away,” she says.

Since that first cyclocross race in 2019, Killips has always raced in the women’s field. She started hormone therapy before her first competitive season. Like many transgender people, Killips identified as trans long before undergoing hormone treatment, and there was no clear point when she “came out.” (Importantly, many trans folks choose to not receive hormone treatment or other gender-affirming care). When Killips reflects on her transition, she focuses less on timelines and medication, and more on the intricacies of gender and identity. Not always does a person’s gender fit neatly into the checkboxes found at race registration, nor stay the same throughout time, she points out. “Gender and sexuality are fickle, funny things,” she says.

Killips began to catch the eye of sponsors after her 2019 success in Illinois cyclocross. At the end of 2020, Killips was contacted by Max Pratt, technical director at Nice Bikes, with a sponsorship offer. In early 2022, she quit her full-time job as a mechanic, and began working part-time for online coaching company TrainerRoad and focusing more intensely on cycling. In the summer of 2022, she quit that job and turned her focus entirely to racing. With regards to her financial stability, “I’m scraping the razor’s edge,” she says, laughing. She has been able to support herself thanks to relationships with Nice Bikes, bicycle component manufacturer SRAM, and Hunt Bike Wheels. She hopes to acquire a more sustainable team contract in the future, which could offer more security than her current set of sponsorships. But the controversy surrounding trans athletes complicates an already challenging career as an elite athlete.

One of Killips most vocal critics has been Inga Thompson, retired Olympic cyclist and ten-time national champion. Following Killips’ win at Tour of the Gila, Thompson took to Twitter, accusing the UCI of “killing off women’s cycling.” Over the phone, Thompson told me she was “concerned for the future of the sport, the grassroots of our sports. We’re watching children walk away.” Thompson’s claim that girls are dropping out of sports due to an influx of trans women remains unbacked by research, and neglects the real factors proven to threaten girls’ sports, such as unequal funding and resources. It also ignores the dire impact of exclusion on trans girls.

According to data compiled by the Trevor Project, a nonprofit dedicated to preventing LGBTQ+ youth suicides, over 50 percent of transgender and non-binary youth in states across the country considered suicide in 2022. In Arkansas, where anti-trans legislation has proliferated, 59 percent of transgender and nonbinary youth considered suicide, 68 percent experienced symptoms of depression, and 83 percent experienced symptoms of anxiety. Importantly, the impact of excluding trans people—in sports and society—goes beyond mental health, contributing to an epidemic of fear and violence. According to a 2018 study in the American Journal of Public Health, transgender people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be the victims of violent crimes.

As a young trans person, Killips wasn’t sure if she’d live to adulthood. “I didn’t think I’d exist at 22 or 23,” Killips recalls. “I just couldn’t conceive of it.”

Thompson and other vocal critics of trans inclusion want to make the current debate appear to be about preserving the integrity of women’s sports, says Wiscomb, now the head mechanic at Nice Bikes. “But if we’ve learned anything from women in sport, we should have learned what it feels like to not be included,” she says. When Wiscomb speaks about Killips, her voice is assured, and pride is palpable in her words. She is most struck by Killip’s intellect—“she just stimulates this part of my brain,” she says—and the two discuss literature and philosophy as often as they discuss bikes. Wiscomb watched Killips develop from a fellow mechanic working diligently to get faster, to an early-career professional athlete “putting her heart and soul into every workout,” and into the champion she is today.

At the end of May, Wiscomb watched Killips take second place at the Belgian Waffle Ride gravel race in Vancouver. Belgian Waffle Ride has grown into one of the largest gravel series in North America, with six races. “Watching her go from Austin, my friend who I drove to a gravel race, to my friend who is on a podium was pretty surreal,” she recalls. In pictures, Killips stands on the podium with her head held high, and her hand on the back of first-place winner Haley Smith. While Wiscomb always knew Killips risked public criticism as she improved in the sport, “I was hoping Austin could just show up and race her heart out,” she says. “Because that’s what Austin deserves to do.”

On June 11, Killips participated in the Belgian Waffle Ride event in Asheville, North Carolina, and scored an emphatic victory, finishing the 131-mile race with a four-minute gap on second-place rider Paige Onweller. After the race, the Belgian Waffle Ride Instagram was flooded with hateful comments. Onweller wrote online that, “In the future, I feel a separate category is appropriate,” for transgender riders.

In early July, Killips received some bad news: her win at Belgian Waffle Ride prompted the race organizers to change the rules for future events. Going forward, the female category will include only “racers who were born female.” On the same podium where Killips had stood in May, a toothy grin and arms around her competitors, she’d no longer be able to race in alignment with her gender identity. When I call Killips to discuss the change, she stumbles with words, as if trying them on for size. She’s not sure how she should comment, or whether she wants to comment. Can she have more time to think? Would that be okay? It’s a non-answer that, in a way, says more about Killips than any definitive answer could. She meets affronts with care and measured thinking. The only thing Killips does hastily is bike.

“That part of Austin that is incredibly analytic and passionately introspective, that’s what allows her to come off as calm and collected,” says Wiscomb. During our interview, Killips instead attributed her even-keeled mindset to Simone Weil. “There’s this essay, ‘Void and Compensation,’ that I come back to often,” says Killips, pulling a book off the shelf behind her. She begins to read aloud, tracing her finger along the page. It’s a passage about the futility of vengeance. “The only way to respond [to criticism] is to act in a way consistent with the world you want to see,” she reflects. “You can’t impart harm and expect it to resolve a conflict.”

Then, on July 14th, the UCI announced their new policy, dropped its bombshell rule, effectively banning Killips from all sanctioned bike races. The rule cuts her off from both her passion and her livelihood. Two days later, she took to her seldom-used Substack newsletter, Estro Junkie, to share her thoughts. Killips wrote about the fleeting nature of elite sport, how her love for cycling developed amidst controversy, and her respect for competitors. “The gratitude I feel when I reflect on my experience is so overwhelming,” she wrote. “Nothing can take away the friendships [cycling] has given me and the moments I’ve shared with so many people that I love dearly.”

“I thought my project was to be the best bike racer I could be but I’m making peace with it evolving into a shape I never expected,” she wrote. “We don’t get to choose where these things take us and that’s okay.” Aside from her newsletter, Killips has remained relatively quiet. She seldom responds to media requests, or replies publicly to anti-trans speech. To her, there will always be something uncanny about the attention she has received. “I don’t think a person is meant to be perceived that much,” she says. And yet she knows, for better or worse, she will continue to be perceived—and critiqued, questioned, and politicized. Recently, however, she has begun to reconsider how she engages with it.

“If I am in a position to agitate for what I feel is an important injustice, I don’t think it would be right to not take that up, in some capacity,” she says. “I just don’t know what that looks like yet.”

The post Austin Killips Just Wants to Ride Her Bike appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Note: this article includes discussion of eating disorders and eating disorder recovery. To seek help for yourself or a loved one, please reach out to the ÌęÌę

The video opens with Allie Ostrander, clad in a cutoff t-shirt and hyperventilating. It’s June of 2021 and Ostrander has a message for her fans. The words are delicate, though, and fear is palpable. She pauses, breathes deeply, and begins to speak.

“Yesterday marked five weeks, for me, of intensive eating disorder treatment,” says the professional track runner and three-time NCAA steeplechase champion. At the time, she is in a partial-hospitalization program, and “eating disorder” is a diagnosis she has never shared publicly before. But her silence is about to end: the YouTube video will eventually amass 93,000 views.

Nearly two years later, 26-year-old Ostrander continues to take fans along for the ups and downs of recovery. Her outspokenness trickles into her professional career, as she recently signed a new sponsorship contract with , a company that supports her mental health advocacy in addition to her racing career. Her openness introduces an important question for athletes, coaches, and anyone involved in the sport of running: what role does transparency play when it comes to eating disorder treatment and prevention?

Eating Disorders and Runners: The Facts

Eating disorders are common in endurance sports. suggest that up to 47 percent of elite runners may suffer from clinical eating disorders. Far from “fad diets” or “phases,” eating disorders are serious, life-threatening mental and physical illnesses. Though research is evolving, the best available evidence shows that they stem from a complex overlay of social and psychological What we do know for sure is that eating disorders do not discriminate. They affect people of all genders, races, ethnicities, ages, religions, sexual orientations, body shapes and weights. The earlier an athlete (or anyone) seeks treatment, the greater their likelihood for recovery. And treatment can be dire: eating disorders rank second, only to opioid addictions, as the mental health condition with the highest mortality rates.

Over the years, various professional runners—such as Mary Cain, Molly Seidel, and Amelia Boone—have shared their stories and raised awareness. Mary Cain’s 2019 launched somewhat of a #MeToo Movement for sports—athletes sharing their experiences, not only with eating disorders, but also with coaches and programs that cultivate unhealthy behaviors. Still, in a sport ripe with disorder, Ostrander’s decision was unique: she shared her story in the early throes of treatment.

“I was feeling pretty alone,” Ostrander reflects. “I had heard stories of people who had gone through recovery and come out the other side stronger. But I hadn’t heard anything about the middle-of-the-road details—where things got hard, where they struggled. All I had heard of was the rainbows on the other side.” Of course, Ostrander clarifies, recovery is individual, and she would never fault an athlete who chooses not to share.

Kylee Van Horn, a sports-oriented registered dietitian nutritionist  (RDN) and founder of FlyNutrition, who specializes in working with athletes in eating disorders and low-energy availability recovery, believes transparency can serve a positive role in recovery.

“Everyone’s eating disorder journey is personal and unique,” she says. “Some may find it triggering [to share] or get caught up in the comparison trap,” which may impede recovery. Overall, athletes must ask themselves: is sharing now supportive of my recovery? If the answer is yes, the outcome is almost always positive—for the athlete, and for their fans.

Paula Quatromoni, DSc, RD, an associate professor of nutrition at Boston University, agrees.

“Those who share their stories often say that it helps them stay motivated for recovery,” explains Quatromoni, who is also the chair of the Health Sciences Department at Boston University. “This transparency saves lives when it educates and builds awareness
It allows some to recognize their own behaviors as problematic and leads them to seek help.” However, seeking help is only the beginning.

A Long Process

Runners often speak of eating disorder recovery like they speak of race day. For both, we assume a clear start and finish. As fans, we know a common story: a young athlete struggles with various injuries. Perhaps they drop away from competition for a bit—maybe months, maybe years. When, or if, they return, the athlete shares that they underwent eating disorder treatment. Just like in a race, we think, finished, done. As runners, we know mile markers. We know race distances and water stops. We plan to dress for rain, for snow, or for sun. Though eating disorder recovery involves none of that—there are no neatly measured courses or clear finish lines.

“It’s such a strange misconception,” reflects Ostrander. “That if someone goes to treatment, that means they’re recovered. Or, if someone’s body changes, that means they’re recovered. But it’s one of the more difficult mental illnesses to recover from.”

Difficult, indeed.

According to the , 60 percent of individuals who undergo professional eating disorder treatment will make full recoveries. In other words, 40 percent don’t recover, or don’t fully recover. And this statistic does not account for the folks who never receive professional help.

Furthermore, eating disorder professionals disagree on what “recovered” even looks like, and whether to use that term. “People don’t usually say ‘I am recovered from an eating disorder.’ They say ‘I am in recovery’ because it is a perpetual state that people move in and out of,” Quatromoni told . “They continue to deal with it pretty much the rest of their life, but they’ve learned how to manage the thoughts and manage the impulses.”

Regardless of the term you use, reaching a healthy state is possible. It requires work. It requires time. But after all the work and time—after all the ups, downs, wrong turns, and curving roads—the person each athlete is meant to be awaits. And that person is always worth it.

Plus, the alternative to recovery is far too dangerous. Eating disorders overlap with (RED-S), a condition characterized by insufficient input to match output energy, missed periods, and recurrent bone injuries. The potential impact of RED-S includes decreased metabolic capacity, dangerously low heart rate and blood pressure, long-term heart damage, GI disorders, poor immunity, worsened mental health, and a heightened risk for suicide. To decrease such outcomes and encourage runners to stick with recovery, we must set clear expectations about the process.

Enter athletes like Ostrander.

In lieu of the road race, she suggests another metaphor for recovery: “They say it takes half the time of a relationship to get over that person,” she explains. “Well, an eating disorder is like a really abusive relationship. If you’re in an eating disorder for 12 years, like a lot of people are, like I was, you can expect full recovery to take five or six years, or more.”

Here lies another rarity of Ostrander’s story: she continues to bring fans along for the journey, even though she never treats recovery as the central facet of her personality. In her college days, Ostrander gained a following not only for her talent and work ethic, but also for her humor. In 2019, after winning her third NCAA steeplechase title, she told an ESPN reporter about the brutal race conditions: “I’m so hot right now. And not like in the attractive way. I feel like I’m really low on the scale in that department.”

Now, on Ostrander’s social media, she intermixes mental health content with zany reels and photo dumps. She speaks of challenging herself with foods she previously feared, like ice cream, and competing at the U.S. Olympic Trials in 2021 during the early days of recovery. She adopts a miniature dachshund, Georgie, and invites fans along for the car ride to get him. She completes a three-mile uphill time trial and brings fans into the pain cave, too. She dances, laughs, and competes in arm-wrestling matches with her partner (“It’s like I’m on iCarly and someone keeps hitting the ‘random dancing’ button,” she writes). Here lies that specific brand of vivacity and quirk that fans have come to expect of Ostrander. Only now, it’s interspersed with mental health advocacy.

An Inaccessible Process

Importantly, Ostrander’s recovery story is just that: her story. To truly treat eating disorders with the attention and transparency they deserve, we must be clear about their breadth. Contrary to the common eating disorder narrative—that they affect small-bodied, white women—these illnesses can affect anyone. And the expectation that athletes with eating disorders “look a certain way,” only harms those who don’t fit the stereotype.

“Many people in certain demographic groups—persons of non-female gender, people of color, people in bodies that don’t appear thin or ‘sick enough,’ those in the LGBTQ+ community—are missed or invalidated,” explains Quatromoni. All athletes face impediments to eating disorder care. Many athletes don’t recognize their own behaviors as disordered, but rather consider them signs of dedication. Further, much shame surrounds mental illnesses, and many coaches and athletic programs overlook, even promote, disordered eating. For athletes of the demographics listed by Quatromoni, these barriers are compounded by bias.

In the future, Quatromoni hopes eating disorder screenings will become the norm in athletic programs. With such tools, eating disorders could be detected in an equitable, unbiased way. Even so, access barriers would remain. Currently, few health professionals are trained in eating disorder care, and eating disorder treatment remains unaffordable and not well reimbursed. “Simply put, ‘accessible to all’ feels like an unattainable goal right now,” says Quatromoni. “Because access to care is insufficient, inequitable, extremely costly, and challenged by discriminatory practices.”

Is There Hope?

Take the statistics on the prevalence of eating disorders in runners, and the prospects for recovery. Add up the widespread health consequences of RED-S, and the barriers to detection and treatment. It’s hard to not feel dejected about the state of eating disorder recovery for runners. But one should not despair completely.

Recent years have brought an influx of media attention to the topic of eating disorders and athletes. Lauren Fleshman’s a dual memoir and reckoning on the harmful systems that impact women runners, reached the New York Times bestseller list in early 2023. Research into eating disorders and RED-S has also increased in recent years. Notably, the Stanford FASTR (Female Athlete Science and Translational Research) Program, launched in 2022, aims to close the gender gap in sports science research, empowering women to learn about their bodies and grow into lifelong athletes. Furthermore, an organization called is working to break down systemic, healthcare, and financial barriers to eating disorder treatment.

For Ostrander, progress came in the form of a contract and a sleek collection of trail running apparel. This February, she signed with her new sponsor, . When , the brand identified her as a “content creator, mental health advocate, and world-class athlete.”

“I’ve spent the past two years building an identity for myself that isn’t athletics-centered,” she says. “I wanted a brand that supported me in that.”

Far beyond writing a pithy tagline, NNormal will support a mental health project of Ostrander’s choice—an agreement that’s built into her contract. NNormal joins a growing list of outdoor footwear and apparel brands placing a premium on athletes’ social impacts and personal wellbeing. At least on paper (and often in practice) these companies challenge the win-at-all-costs, performance-or-bust ethos of more traditional contracts with an intent of partnering with individuals who are more than just athletes.

Creating a sporting environment where eating disorders are rare, and recovery is accessible, may seem like an infeasible goal. Though certain realms of research, media, nonprofit and for-profit work provide some assurance. Perhaps most encouraging of all are the individual athletes sharing their stories and pushing for a better culture. At the end of her , a teary Ostrander says, “I do not want the next generation to feel the way that I feel.” As she and other runners continue to share the realities of eating disorder recovery, we move closer to granting that wish.

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During her intern year of medical residency in 2013, while working at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Nebraska, Dr. Emily Kraus found herself unable to climb a flight of stairs. She was training for a marathon, and her running performance had also declined in recent weeks. She mostly attributed her fatigue to the realities of the intern year—the long shifts, sleepless nights, and nutrient-poor hospital meals. But on that day, her symptoms became hard to ignore. She paused, leaned over the banister, and took a few moments to catch her breath.

When she followed up with her doctor to get blood work done, she was diagnosed with an iron deficiency. After searching for information on supplements and training protocols, Kraus quickly realized there was little information on how to safely return to training as an anemic female runner. In fact, there was little information on female runners’ physiology, period. “I felt silly, because I was interested in sports medicine, so I thought I had a good understanding and knowledge base,” she says. “But I was caught without adequate resources to navigate this.” Kraus eventually found the right supplementation and nutrition regimen to increase her iron levels and return to her previous level of training, but only after a frustrating process.

Throughout her residency, Kraus worked with many female athletes, treating their injuries and witnessing the misconceptions they held about their bodies. These experiences, along with her personal health challenges, eventually led her to ask deeper questions about the gaps in female-athlete research. After completing her internship in Nebraska, Kraus finished her residency at Stanford, in California, where she began a career in sports medicine. In January, she teamed up with to launch the (Female Athlete Science and Translational Research) Program, which focuses on the gender gap in human-performance research, empowering female athletes of all levels and backgrounds to achieve longevity in sport.

Both Kraus and Roche have dedicated much of their careers to understanding female-athlete physiology—Kraus as a sports-medicine physician and clinical assistant professor at Stanford, and Roche as an epidemiology PhD candidate with a medical degree from Stanford. They’re also both accomplished endurance athletes: Kraus is an avid marathoner and cyclist, and Roche is a professional trail runner and coach, a five-time national champion, and a six-time member of Team USA. With Kraus as program director and Roche as lead researcher, the FASTR team plans to upend the current landscape of female-athlete research and build a healthier women’s running culture in the process.

“It’s about doing the research,” Roche says. “But it’s also about how we frame it, talk about it, and empower female athletes through that research.”

It’s well established that women are grossly underrepresented in sports-science research. A 2014 review of 1,382 exercise medicine studies found that only were women. Isolate sports-performance studies, and the gap only grows: women accounted for a mere of study participants.

According to Kraus and Roche, studies too often exclude female athletes due to the complex nature of the menstrual cycle. Hormonal changes that occur throughout the menstrual cycle health variables, from resting heart rate, to recovery metrics, and even the metabolic system. “I became frustrated as an athlete and as a coach, seeing that we’re doing really awesome exercise physiology studies,” Roche says. “But oftentimes we can’t generalize or apply them to female athletes.”

When studies on male subjects are generalized to women, it can lead to misconceptions among female athletes and their coaches. In distance running, this includes misguided notions of what a female athlete’s body “should” look like and strict philosophies on how women should train and fuel. (One example of this is fasted training, which on women’s hormonal systems.) The impacts of such training approaches can be risky and in some cases can lead to the development of the female athlete triad or  (relative energy deficiency in sport), two related conditions characterized by under-fueling, poor bone health, and a range of other physical and mental health consequences. Kraus notes that depression and anxiety symptoms are commonly found in athletes with low-energy availability and other components of the triad and RED-S. “As a clinician, when I have an athlete come in with low-energy availability, I’m also talking to them about mental health,” she says.

To abate these risks, FASTR proposes a threefold approach: identification, intervention, and translation. Through multiple research projects, they will identify risk factors for bone-stress injuries and other conditions faced by female athletes. Then they will intervene by improving the available screening tools and resources to prevent under-fueling and bone-stress injuries. Finally, they will translate this research, making information on fueling, recovery, mental health, and injury prevention accessible to all athletes, coaches, and medical practitioners.

For one project, FASTR plans to collaborate with to compare the two screening questionnaires currently used to identify athletes at risk for the triad and RED-S, to determine when these tools are most effective and how they can be improved. At the same time, they will analyze the various protocols doctors are using to safely guide athletes back to sport after experiences with RED-S or the triad. They hope to create a more streamlined plan that all clinicians can use to help athletes return to sport and prevent future under-fueling and bone injuries.

Kraus and Roche are committed to including all types of women athletes in their program: NCAA athletes, high school athletes, cis women, and trans women. “Inclusion has got to be the default in every single sport environment,” Roche says. “This is a human-rights issue.”

One of the program’s first initiatives is the FASTR , a series of educational videos aimed at female high school runners. The rationale behind these videos, Roche explains, is to present FASTR’s research to the intended audience in an approachable way: “How do we get these findings into the hands of young athletes, parents, coaches, and people who could use the information most? How do we fill that translation gap and make the research accessible?” The videos include perspectives from role models of diverse athletic backgrounds—professional athletes, sports-equity activists, and other leaders in sport. Among them is , an ultrarunner known for her body-politics activism.

“The media often acknowledges the cosmetic things—that I’m a Black athlete, or that I’m an athlete of size,” Shauntay Snell says. “But I am also an athlete with disabilities. When you have many layers to your athletic journey, it’s harder to see yourself represented.” Through her FASTR content, Shauntay Snell hopes to foster a sense of belonging among younger athletes.

To the FASTR team, research cannot realize its full impact if it’s not communicated in a way that empowers female athletes. “Runners sometimes get the notion that female-athlete physiology is a nuisance or a burden,” Roche says. “I’m excited to see the research become more inclusive of female athletes but also more positive—periods are powerful, female-athlete physiology is strong, and there are cool things happening to our bodies.”

Last fall, the University of Oregon women’s track team became the latest in a long lineup of collegiate running programs to face and an environment that enabled disordered eating. The FASTR team envisions a better collegiate running culture—one in which female athletes are celebrated for their diverse bodies and a premium is placed on nutrition and long-term health. To this end, one of FASTR’s projects will expand on an existing program: the Healthy Runner Project.

The was launched at Stanford and UCLA in 2016, to evaluate whether a nutrition intervention could improve bone mineral density and decrease bone-stress injuries in varsity distance runners. In the original study of 114 women, athletes underwent a nutrition assessment, which included a web-based screening survey, one-on-one meetings with a dietitian, and a DEXA scan to measure bone density. With the help of the dietitian, athletes set nutrition goals, such as adding snacks or increasing the nutrient density of snacks and meals they were already eating.

, a 2020 Stanford graduate and six-time all-American who now runs professionally for Puma, remembers the Healthy Runner Project as routine. “It didn’t seem that unusual,” she says. “Hearing that this is less common at other schools definitely makes me grateful that we had it in place.” After promising preliminary results at UCLA and Stanford, FASTR is in the early stages of expanding this project to other PAC-12 schools. The team hopes that a focus on nutrition and long-term health can become routine in all collegiate running programs.

On paper, FASTR’s aim is to lessen the gender gap in sports-science research. But Roche and Kraus are also asking bigger questions. Can something as historically rigid as medical research have a broad and inclusive effect: longevity for all women in all sports?

Looking ahead, “I hope there are more runners,” Kraus says. “That means women are staying healthy and they’re not dropping out of sports or getting discouraged because of injuries, body changes, or other factors. It means they are more informed about their bodies.”

“I just want to make sport a fun and safe environment for everyone,” Roche adds. “I want science to inform best training practices so that people can enjoy sport for a long, long time.”

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