Trans male swimmer Iszac Henig struggles to go head-to-head against men after transitioning

Transgender swimmer Iszac Henig has admitted his transition has made him a statistically worse swimmer after finishing 79th out of 83 in the men’s competition, but says he ultimately “lives longer” as a man.

Henig, 21, began swimming for the Yale men’s team after placing as an All-American on the women’s team the previous year.

In an opinion piece published Thursday, Henig notes that her times are “about the same” as last season when she swam with the women, but as a result, in a November meet, she finished 79th of 83.

Sports website Outkick noted that a swimmer with no left arm and three others who specialize in different strokes were the only four to finish behind Henig.

It’s a big drop in terms of competition, given that Henig was such a renowned swimmer that she competed in the 2016 Olympic trials and was named one of the top 100 swimmers in the country.

He wrote: “I wasn’t the slowest guy in any of my events, but I’m not as successful in the sport as I am on the women’s team.”

writing for him New York TimesHenig, who along with Penn’s Lia Thomas, has caused controversy and backlash against transgender athletes, says she’s living her best life.

He talks about using swimming in high school, where he was highly rated and broke records, as a way to see value in himself while feeling like he was “completely out of touch with myself” and contributing to a team.

“I felt more appreciated and closer to myself when I was swimming,” he wrote and was elated to jump on the Yale swim team when Henig arrived at Connecticut’s Ivy League institution.

‘I was able to define myself by what I could do beyond the norm, not by how well I could fit into it. I didn’t need to wonder who I was like I did at school or in social settings,” she added.

Henig said he continued to enjoy life as a swimmer at Yale to begin with, having become the leading scorer on the women’s swim team as a sophomore.

However, at the time, he describes his ‘mere existence’ as ‘effort’ and said he felt discomfort in the locker room.

While he had already acknowledged that he was attracted to women and assumed that was what was causing the confusion, it soon became bigger than that.

“I thought my discomfort stemmed from concern that my sexuality would make others uncomfortable,” he writes. “I hadn’t yet considered that the real reason I felt so bad was my feeling that I was in the wrong locker room.”

He said things got worse during the pandemic, as he was sent home from school and the pools were closed, leaving him without the escape swimming so often provided.

Henig chose to take a sabbatical “to focus on improving my mental health and, as a bonus, preserving my eligible college seasons.”

As she tried to hold on to being a woman, she says the feelings only got worse and she eventually tried therapy.

“I dove deeper into queerness, exploring the balance of masculinity and femininity, especially with presentation in clothing,” Henig wrote. “Through that I discovered binders, base layer compression garments used to create a more traditionally masculine chest look.”

Henig claims to feel ‘elated’ putting together this look and it ultimately led him to question his identity as a woman.

Eventually, it led to him changing his name, pronouns, and having a double mastectomy in early 2021. The final decision, when he returned to Yale, was what he would do with the swim team.

She was given the option to choose the men’s or women’s team and chose the women’s team at first, saying she felt she had compromised, but it eventually became impossible to sail.

So after what Henig calls the “best swimming season of my life” that included an Ivy League championship and a top-five finish at the NCAA championships, he finally decided to join the men’s team.

In addition to a 79th-place finish in November against Columbia, she also finished 10-of-11 and 11-of-12 in two events days earlier and finished slower than anyone in a third.

That said, that’s not really the point for Henig. “I’m trying to connect with my teammates in new ways, cheer loudly, focus more on the emotion of the sport,” Henig wrote. ‘Competing and being challenged is the best part. It’s a different kind of satisfaction. And it’s great to feel comfortable in the locker room every day.

Henig concludes: “Feeling congruent with my team has opened my eyes even more to how powerful athletic communities can be and how important it is for everyone to have the chance to feel that.”

Trans swimmers Lia Thomas and Henig spark controversy and more questions about their continued involvement in competitive sports.

Earlier this year, President Joe Biden proposed changing the definition of “sex” in a federal civil rights law to include “gender” and “gender identity.”

Changes to Title IX, the 1972 law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any school or any other educational program that receives federal funding, would allow transgender athletes to compete against biological women in sports.