For those who may not remember, Thomas:
- Was the #89 ranked male swimmer nationally in her final year as a man, despite being hindered by female hormones. This may not be elite, but it sure isn't "crappy" if you're in the top 100
- Was the #32 ranked female swimmer nationally in her only season as a female, which isn't really elite either
- Did not set any records as a female swimmer
- Won 1 national championship as a woman while competing in 4 events
I think it's fairly obvious that she did have some advantage over ciswomen swimmers, but why overstate the argument by saying she "set all kinds of records and won everything as a woman swimmer" when that's an objectively false statement?
As someone who has followed college swimming for a while before and after Thomas transitioned, I have to say that you are getting things mixed up.
First of all, Thomas transitioned after the 2018-2019 season. All of her best times in Men's Swimming were before she started HRT.
Second, those rankings are extremely flawed. Swimcloud uses some bizarre methodology and those rankings are not really taken seriously. Thomas was probably around #300 in 2018-2019, as she was quite a bit off NCAA scoring even in her best event. 133 different men scored in 2019 (top 16) and 32nd is a long ways off that. In 2022 she was the 6th best scoring woman.
In her events, fastest times in NCAA swimming:
1650: 32nd to 13th
500: 65th to 1st
200: 554th to 3rd
100: Did not even swim it, probably something like #2000, as she was not a sprinter, to 13th
Her relative improvement was unheard of. Usually rapid improvement is due to young age or a program change, but neither was the case here. The fact that her relative improvement was most acute in sprint events is further sign that she held a biological advantage, as those are the events where men are fastest relative to women.
No one who follows swimming even questions that Thomas held an unfair advantage. It's not rooted out of transphobia, as most of us hate Riley Gaines and don't want to target to Thomas. Even those who support her swimming in Women's events do so in support of inclusion. I have seldom seen anyone try to say she didn't reap a massive advantage and that things were fair.
To your final point, her best times in 200 and the 100 pre-HRT wouldn't have been Women's records in the first place. The fact that she went from a nobody in sprint events to among the best in the nation is striking. If any scoring sprinter male swimmer transitioned, they would be pretty likely to demolish existing Women's records.
