Liz Power

If it’s true that @parkrunUK sends the results of its non-competitive, not-a-race, ‘mass community participation event’ to UK athletics and running websites which are for licensed competition races then it’s an absolute disgrace and the height of hypocrisy.

Hi @lisanandy, in this interview, you said Khelif fighting in women’s boxing was “uncomfortable” to watch & you admitted female athletes had concerns. Why have you said nothing since the IOC protected the Female category? What is the Govt’s view on this? news.sky.com/video/imane-kh…

This utterly vile man harassed me on X for years. It’s the biggest reason it’s absolutely vital they are not allowed to change next to your daughters or cheat in women’s sport. When they tell u who they are… believe them!

More and more, I agree with whoever observed that her success, which couldn’t be written off as due to family connections, and so had to be accepted as just hers, has been eating away at some people for a very long time. I think we’ve been watching a dam bursting on resentment.

Remember this well. I was incensed female Olympians had not ever been asked for their views. So I asked them. Sean covered my research back in 2019. Published in 2021. One of the most cited & read papers for the journal. x.com/i/status/14081…

A man noticed that his neighbor’s cats were coming to his property to drink water so he set up a camera to see who else was drinking water. He was not disappointed.

In June 1965, six Tongan teenage boys ran away from St. Andrews Anglican boarding school in Nukuʻalofa on the island of Tongatapu. The boys — Luke Veikoso, Stephen Tevita Fatai Latu, Sione Fataua, David Tevita Siolaʻa, Kolo Fekitoa, and Mano Sione Filipe Totau, aged between 13 and 19 — stole a 7.3-metre boat and set out to sea with little preparation. That night, anchored about 10 kilometres north of Tongatapu, a fierce storm snapped the anchor rope and destroyed the boat's sail and rudder. For eight days the boys drifted nearly 320 kilometres to the southwest, bailing water from their disintegrating vessel until they spotted the remote, uninhabited island of ʻAta. They abandoned the wreck and spent 36 gruelling hours swimming to shore using planks salvaged from the broken boat. Mano was the first to reach land, too weak from hunger and dehydration to stand, but he called out to the others that he had made it safely. In those first desperate days, the boys dug a cave by hand and hunted seabirds for meat, blood, and eggs just to survive. Their situation improved dramatically after three months when they discovered the ruins of a 19th-century village called Kolomaile hidden inside the island's volcanic crater, reached after a two-day climb. There they found the remnants of old gardens and revived them, growing wild taro and bananas and catching feral chickens for food. They collected rainwater in hollowed-out tree trunks and drank seabird blood when fresh water ran scarce. The boys divided their labour into pairs, rotating responsibilities for the garden, cooking, and guard duty, maintaining a disciplined daily routine throughout their ordeal. One of the boys, Stephen, managed to start a fire using two sticks, and the group kept that fire burning continuously for more than a year. At night they sang together and played a makeshift guitar, even composing five original songs during their time on the island to keep their spirits alive. They once attempted to escape on a homemade raft, but it broke apart about a mile offshore and forced them back — fortunately so, as they had been sailing south into open ocean, wrongly believing they were headed for Samoa. On September 11, 1966, Australian fisherman Peter Warner, captaining the boat Just David, noticed patches of burned grass on the island's cliffsides and steered closer to investigate. Through binoculars he spotted the unkempt boys and approached carefully, having been warned that serious criminals were sometimes marooned on remote islands. Stephen dived into the water and swam out to the boat, explaining their situation in English. Warner radioed the boys' names to Nukuʻalofa and received the astonished reply: "You found them! These boys have been given up for dead. Funerals have been held. If it's them, this is a miracle!" All six boys were found to be in remarkably healthy condition upon examination after their rescue. Warner hired the boys to crew a lobster boat, and their grateful families promised to teach him the secret fishing grounds of the Pacific spiny lobster in return. The Tongan king granted Warner a royal concession to trap spiny lobster in Tongan waters as a reward for saving the boys' lives. Shortly after the celebration, the boys were arrested when the owner of the stolen boat pressed charges against them. Warner arranged for Channel 7 in Sydney to film a documentary about their story, selling the rights for £150 and using the money to compensate the boat's owner, who then dropped the charges. The resulting documentary, The Castaways, was broadcast in October 1966, and one surviving 16mm copy is available today on YouTube. In 2020, historian Rutger Bregman featured the boys' story in his book Humankind: A Hopeful History, holding it up as a real-world contrast to the fictional savagery depicted in Lord of the Flies. #archaeohistories

Very disappointing that such a significant move by the IOC for women’s sport has not been welcomed immediately by the Sports Minister or the Secretary of State.

Maybe I’ve missed it but I haven’t seen a peep from @lisanandy @Steph_Peacock or @DCMS about this. British athletes like Lynsey Sharp will no longer have to compete against males. Nothing to say? Or are they still too terrified of the TRAs?

When bicycles appeared in the late 19th century, they collided perfectly with the growing women’s rights movement. For the first time, women could travel alone without needing a carriage, a chaperone, or a man to escort them. This wasn’t just about convenience, it was about autonomy. Susan B. Anthony famously said the bicycle had “done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world,” because it gave women literal mobility at a time when society tried to keep them physically and socially confined. Cycling clubs, women’s riding groups, and long‑distance female cyclists became symbols of independence, challenging Victorian ideas about what women were “allowed” to do. That freedom forced fashion to change. Traditional corsets, bustles, and floor‑length skirts were dangerous on a bicycle, they snagged in gears, restricted breathing, and made riding nearly impossible. So women began adopting bloomers, shorter skirts, and looser clothing, sparking outrage from conservatives who saw these garments as scandalous. But the shift stuck. By the early 20th century, the bicycle had helped push Western women toward more practical clothing and more public visibility. It wasn’t just a mode of transportation, it was a quiet revolution on two wheels, reshaping gender norms long before women won the vote. One fascinating detail often left out is how fiercely the bicycle was attacked by the establishment. Doctors warned that cycling would cause “bicycle face”, a fake medical condition claiming women’s faces would freeze in an unladylike grimace. Clergy preached that bicycles would lead women to moral ruin because they could travel unchaperoned. Newspapers mocked women who wore bloomers, and some cities even tried to ban women from riding altogether. The backlash was so intense precisely because bicycles were working: they were giving women independence, physical strength, and public visibility in a way society had never seen. That resistance and women’s refusal to back down is what makes the bicycle not just a tool of mobility, but a symbol of early feminist rebellion. #drthehistories

My Sunday Telegraph article is about a mum taking legal action against Girlguiding due to safeguarding concerns - inc. the conduct of trans activist guide leaders & commissioners (senior regional volunteers). I’ll just leave this here (along with a link to the article).

A few crazy things about this race and the climate at the time. -Melissa Bishop would have been a legend without the DSD athletes. Olympic Gold, World Champ, and a WC silver. -You'd talk to a lot of elite mid-distance women behind the scenes for years and they'd be pissed off, but afraid to get reamed in the media for doing so. Or just realizing that nothing would change. -Canada's head coach who was told after Bishop finished 4th at the Olympics by a lawyer for the Canadian Olympic committee "‘You say one thing about this, I’m going to make sure you’re banned for life in all sports.’” -Lyndsey Sharp did speak up and got torn apart in the media, so the fear was real. It was just a wild time. And many women lost a lot of money and glory because of it.

As another man who once worked with me declares himself saddened by my beliefs on gender and sex, I thought it might be useful to compile a list for handy reference. Which of the following do you imagine makes actors and directors who aren’t involved with the HBO reboot of Harry Potter so miserable? Is it my belief that women and girls should have their own public changing rooms and bathrooms? That women should retain female-only rape crisis centres? That men don’t belong in women’s sport? That female prisoners shouldn’t be incarcerated with violent men and male sex offenders? That women should remain a protected class in law, because they have sex-specific needs and issues? That language should reflect reality rather than ideological jargon, especially in a medical context? That women shouldn’t be harassed, persecuted or fired for refusing to pretend humans can change sex? That women should not be threatened with violence and rape when they assert their rights? That freedom of speech and belief are essential to a pluralistic democratic society? That troubled minors, especially those who are gay, autistic and trauma-experienced, should be given mental health support instead of irreversible surgeries and drug treatments on non-existent evidence of benefit? That gay people shouldn’t be pressured to include the opposite sex in their dating pools, nor should they be smeared as ‘genital fetishists’ when they don’t? That cross-dressing heterosexual male fetishists aren’t actually oppressed, but having the time of their lives piggybacking off gender identity ideology? That said ideology, and the privileged, blinkered fools pushing it because they suffer zero consequences themselves, have done more damage to the political left’s credibility than Trump and Farage could have achieved in a century? Let me have your thoughts.

@goryrory The "winner", Semenya ran 1.55.28. In the men's final, Rudisha won in 1.42.15 and the last placed man, USA's Boris Berian came in at 1.46.15. Slowest man in the heats was Nicaragua's Edgar Cortez. He finished last in Heat 6 with a time of 1:51.58.

@gordyb1872 Poor Lynsey. She was presented to us as a sore loser and a moaning minnie when all she wanted was to be able to run in fair races. I hope that she is well and that she knows that to many of us, she was and will always be considered to have won a Bronze.

To the deadheads who will say that this is all about race & that I am picking on poor black "women", I say "no". The presence of these 3 men at the Olympics meant that a black woman from each of Burundi, Kenya & a black, white, possibly Asian woman from RSA had to stay at home.

The most disgraceful race in Olympic history. As the camera panned the runners on the start line, I remember thinking, "what the F". As top 3 mounted the podium, I shouted at the television, "these are men!" Top 3 women? 1 Melissa Bishop 2 Joanna Jozwik 3 Lynsey Sharp (GB).

Now for @Paralympics President @parsonsandrew to announce the same policy on the ‘Protection of the Female Category’ - because female Paralympians deserve safe & fair sport too No more allowing males into the female category based on an ‘F’ on their passport

‘This test will mean that women who have gone through male puberty will not be able to compete’ There is no such thing ⁦@WalesOnline⁩ 🦄 walesonline.co.uk/sport/transgen…

@JournalismSEEN @WalesOnline You have to wonder if the news editor at @WalesOnline was missing in action when this piece was cleared for publication. 🙄

@thewinterdollx Between 50 to 60 athletes who went through MALE puberty have been finalists in the FEMALE category in global & continental track and field championships since 2000” No wonder female athletes have overwhelmingly supported sex screening! theguardian.com/sport/2025/sep…