Tour of the Gila race director on Austin Killips' victory: “This could kill the sport”

Michael Engleman, race director of the Tour of the Gila, has issued a withering rebuke to cycling’s governing bodies after trans athlete Austin Killips’ victory in the women’s event sparked a big controversy with some fans. 

“I know how hard it is to get people to put money into a women’s team, at any level,” he says. “And now they’re asking, ‘Is this something I can touch? What if an athlete says the wrong thing?' This is harming the sport. It’s a reality that somebody has to speak about," said Engleman in a recent interview.

The abuse suffered by Engleman and his race staff since Killips’ win has been so severe – “the world changes,” he admits, “when you get a message from somebody saying, ‘We hope you get shot in the face’” – that he spent two days hiking in the Colorado mountains to clear his head. “I’m no hero here,” he tells Telegraph Sport. “There are lots of other people distressed and making threats to quit. I think we’re all thinking, ‘If we decide to give an interview, is this our last day in the sport?' But you have to do this sometimes.”

Engleman’s emotions are heightened by the fact that he served as the director of US women’s cycling development for six years. While he is wary of criticising Killips personally, he is clearly perturbed by the cyclist’s sudden surge to dominance and by the psychological effect a trans rider’s successes could have on promising female riders.

“I have worked with some of the best female cyclists in the world, and I saw them do extraordinary things right from the beginning,” he explains. “And here’s somebody who nobody has ever heard of, who in a first UCI stage race [the 2022 Tour of the Gila] comes third. It hardly ever happens. Austin was also third in a time trial on a non-time trial bike. So, it makes you wonder. I’m a performance person. You look at that and you say, ‘That’s not right.’”

Austin Killips' victory at Tour of the Gila gave birth to a huge controversy regarding transgender athletes participating in women races. The discussion over got so intense that last week, UCI agreed to look into the matter during a recent meeting.