A free weekly fun run seems an unlikely battleground for a culture war.
But Parkrun, a community-led non-competitive event that takes place every Saturday morning in more than 20 countries, has removed data such as gender, course and speed records from its website after becoming embroiled in a row over trans participants.
Parkrun told BBC Sport that it had been considering changes to its published data since before the Covid-19 pandemic, and denied that the decision was in response to criticism for allowing trans entrants to self-identify their gender.
However, the charity that organises the event is being accused of “sex discrimination” against women, said Athletics Weekly, as several female course records appear to have been broken by transgender women. Parkrun has been “doggedly pursued by protesters and the media, unhappy at its policy of allowing trans women to identify as female”, said The Guardian‘s Jonathan Liew.
‘A threat to the entirety of female sport’
The Saturday 5km runs, which originated in southwest London, now take place in more than 2,300 locations around the world with more than 9 million registered Parkrunners.
Parkrun previously published a list of all-time records, broken down by age, gender, total number of wins and runs, which allowed runners to compare their times with all previous runners on a course.
But in December, the right-wing think tank Policy Exchange said its analysis found that at least three Parkrun records in the women’s category were held by trans women. The report argued that “the problem of biological males competing in the female category” went beyond elite competition, and was “a threat to the entirety of female sport”. It called for Parkrun to be stripped of taxpayer funding “within 12 months”, if the charity did not collect course data based on birth sex, and update all its records to reflect that change.
Campaign groups argued that Parkrun should emulate governing bodies like UK Athletics by barring trans women from the female category, and began wearing “save women’s sports” slogans at the weekly events.
Parkrun rejected the proposal to force transgender runners to record their birth sex, arguing that it was a community event and a public health charity focused on inclusion. There was concern that a “sex at birth” policy was inappropriate for a non-competititve event, and would discourage trans people from registering and accessing the event’s “vast health benefits”, said The Daily Telegraph.
‘Parkrun is not a race’
Last week, the charity “abruptly” removed all comparative course records from its websites, including “world” Parkrun records, from both its Saturday 5km event and its Sunday 2km run for children. Runners can still choose to register as “female”, “male”, “prefer not to say” or “another gender identity”, and their results will be listed alongside the gender in which they have identified.
Parkrun will still publish results every week as normal, with position, name, gender, age and time. A statement said that the changes had followed a review over “many months” by a “global working group” to consider “how we can present data in a way that is not off-putting and doesn’t imply that Parkrun is a race”.
The lack of all-time records or comparison with other runners “has angered some of those many runners who find the data and competitive element to be a major incentive for participation”, said The Telegraph.
Mara Yamauchi, the fifth fastest British female marathon runner in history, said losing the competitive element would “be very discouraging, demotivating and unfair” for women. And the Women’s Rights Network said Parkrun “would rather stop publishing age category data and rankings rather than allow fair sport for women and girls”.
But Parkrun has “always maintained that it is a running event and not a race, has no prizes and hardly any competitive apparatus at all”, said The Guardian’s Liew. A Sky News reporter sent to a London Parkrun encountered “only indifference” at the data change, he added.
Elsewhere, Liew said, anger “is being whipped up and exploited by malign actors, the media and politicians of the reactionary right, to advance causes that go well beyond the remit of women’s sport”.
Liew’s article in turn attracted criticism from gender critical advocates J.K. Rowling and Debbie Hayton, who said in The Spectator that ascribing the row to right-wing reactionaries is “just not true”.
But calls to strip Parkrun of its funding have continued. “Maybe they will be successful and one of the most accepting, free, physical activity phenomenons of recent decades will find itself incapable of continuing,” said Ben Bloom at The Independent. “By its own admission, no one wins at Parkrun. But everyone could stand to lose. Would that really be worth it?”
