evidence: Lia Thomas has been swimming since she was five years old. As a high schooler, she was one of the top swimmers in Texas, an All-American. She followed her older brother onto the men’s team at the University of Pennsylvania, and established herself as a strong competitor in distance races; in her sophomore season, at the Ivy League championships, she finished second in three events. Out of the pool, though, she was struggling. Her body, with its solid pectorals and compact, muscled hips, characteristic traits of a male athlete, didn’t align with her sense of who she was, she later told the podcast SwimSwam, in one of the two interviews she has given this season. She read the personal stories of trans women online, and was paired with a trans mentor through a group at Penn. She saw her own feelings reflected in their stories, she recently told Sports Illustrated. In the summer of 2018, after her freshman season, she realized that she was a woman, not a man.