A trans-identifying athlete won a women's cycling event that was officially sanctioned by USA Cycling on Tuesday, prompting female opponents to protest and speak out.
The trans athlete, Kate Phillips, won first place at the Lyons Masters National Championships in Wisconsin on Tuesday. Phillips beat out veteran women's cyclist Julie Peterson for the gold, and Peterson then refused to take the podium at the medal ceremony in protest.
"You could clearly see the power that he had," Peterson told Fox News Digital about Phillips.
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Peterson said she wasn't even aware that Phillips had registered for the event until she had already registered herself and even argued with officials about the situation.
"If I had known, I wouldn't have spent thousands of dollars in travel and time off work to come and do a race," Peterson said.
"I said, 'I don't want to race against a man,' and they quickly scolded me and said 'Oh, you can't call him a man,' and I'm like 'Well, he is a man,' so I was quickly scolded and corrected that it is a woman and I don't even know what to say."
Veteran women's cyclist Debbie Milne competed in the Tuesday event, finishing in seventh place. Milne also spoke out against USA Cycling for allowing Phillips to compete.
"To be fair to all humans, if we want to say him or her, he was born a biological male, that is a fact," Milne told Fox News Digital. "And that is the thing that makes it an unfair advantage. Whatever has happened after that is a whole different topic.
"I've raced for 25 years in conditions that only women can understand. There's a lot that only a born female woman goes through because of the cycles that we have. Even that alone is something that a man-born biological male can never experience. There's nothing that can stimulate that, when you show up to the race and you are at the worst point of the monthly cycle and you know you're at a disadvantage."
Milne also said she wasn't aware of the trans athlete's participation ahead of the race.
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"I totally did not expect this, to drive 13 hours, to come and do a national championship," Milne said. "I had no idea, I'd like to have known that's what the terms were if I came. But that wasn't even made known to me."
Fellow veteran women's cyclist Kristina Gray, who did not compete against Phillips on Tuesday, wanted to speak out in support of her female peers because she said she's also had to compete against trans athletes in cycling as an Oregon native.
"I have in my last 10 years of racing, I've had to race against biological males, I've been forced to be on the podium with many of them, more recently the last five years," Gray said. "In Oregon, every almost weekend, there is a biological male in our races, every weekend, practically."
The three women then reached out to the Independent Council on Women's Sports (ICONS) to spread awareness of the incident.
Fox News Digital has reached out to USA Cycling and Phillips for comment.
The USA Cycling transgender eligibility policy allows for biological males to compete in the women's category under certain conditions:
Several other Team USA national governing bodies have come under scrutiny for their transgender eligibility policies over the last year.
USA Gymnastics removed its transgender eligibility policy this year, and is currently assessing it.
"In May, USAG removed its policy to assess compliance with the current legal landscape," read a USA Gymnastics statement provided to Fox News Digital.
USA Fencing announced in April that it is preparing to change its gender-eligibility policy, after a viral protest by women's fencer Stephanie Turner sparked mass backlash and federal intervention by protesting a trans opponent.
The organization said it is preparing to amend its current policies that allow biological males to compete with women and girls in the event that it is "forced" to change them.
USA Track and Field (USATF) official transgender eligibility policy now references the World Athletics guidelines on its official webpage. USATF previously referenced the International Olympic Committee (IOC)'s policy, as seen in an archive via Wayback Machine.
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