Felipe Delgado, the father of a female swimmer that competed against transgender University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, told Newsmax on Wednesday that the "NCAA missed the point" on the transgender debate.
Delgado, a former Olympic swimmer, said on "Greg Kelly Reports" that the collegiate organization should focus instead on protecting the integrity of women's athletic competition.
"They've come so far to have somebody come in and take over their sport, and take over their biggest meet of the year, and something that most of these girls have been working on for, really, their entire lives — to get to the pinnacle of their career — just to have somebody come in and derail that," Delgado said.
Delgado praised USA Swimming, a separate organization that regulates swimming professionally, for releasing updated guidelines last month that raise the barrier to entry for transgender athletes by requiring a lower testosterone concentration in the blood.
Delgado said he would like to see the organization adopt similar standards.
"USA Swimming, all credit to them. They did come out with some strict policies for transgender athletes that they should have had to adhere to," he said.
"Unfortunately, the NCAA decided not to follow those policies — something that they said that they were going to do. They were going to follow all of the governing body's policies from each individual sport. They decided not to."
Delgado attributed Thomas' easy victory at the swimming championships in Atlanta last week to a failure by the committee to adopt stricter policies. Later, he restated how he he would like the NCAA to address the issue.
"The NCAA should immediately adopt USA Swimming's policies on transgender athletes," he said. "That would really protect the biological women who are competing at these events from their events being taken away from them."
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