70-year-old Trans Fencer DOMINATING Women’s Sports
Liz Kocab, who has competed in older age brackets of women’s fencing competitions for over a decade, won her 8th world championship, over a cis woman who has won 14 times.
by Evan Urquhart
Every little cis girl dreams of one day growing up to win the 70+ category of the Vet Fencing World Epee Championship. Sadly, those dreams have now been shattered by a powerhouse of an over 70s epee fencer, Liz Kocalb. That’s right, moms, tell your precious 6-year-old daughters to put away their tiny epees and huge dreams, they’re never going to win the 70+ category because a trans woman has won it twice.
screenshot from usafencing.org
Veteran Fencing, as we hardly need to explain because everyone knows it to be one of the biggest, most hotly-contested, and well-known athletic competitions in the world, is a competitive fencing category for older adults consisting of categories for those 50-59, 60-69, and 70+*. Kocalb, who has competed in Women’s Vet Fencing since 2009 and won a variety of gold, silver, and bronze medals in both team and individual events, recently won the world championship for women over 70 years of age for the second year in a row.
screenshot from Fox News
To do so Kocab beat Marja-Liisa Someroja of Finland, also a championship Vet Fencer multiple times over. Like Kocab, Someroja has competed in various age brackets of Vet Fencing over the years, including winning the 70+ bracket in 2019. (She also happens to be 6 years older than Kocab.)
Concern that Kocab is dominating over 70s women’s fencing has led to the alarm being raised far and wide, from serious news organizations like Fox News, to the anti-woke sports blog Outkick. Even former fifth-place tying college swimmer Riley Gaines has weighed in, tweeting, “Winning a title as a male in the women's category doesn't make you a champion. It makes you an entitled cheat.”
The problem is even more dire than these brave far-right anti-trans obsessives now realize, though. Because there’s no upper limit to the 70+ category, there is literally nothing we can think of that could stop the 71-year-old from winning every 70+ epee world championship from now until the end of time. By our calculations, in 2087, by the time a cis girl who is 6-years-old today finally reaches the age of 70 and becomes eligible to compete in this prestigious, culture defining event, Liz Kocalb will have won the 70+ Vet Fencing Epee World Championship a whopping 66 times!
Some people might say the focus on victories of trans women in specific age brackets in lesser-known sports is a sign that evidence of trans women’s unfair advantage in over women’s sports is unavailable. Some might speculate this leads to anti-trans activists and sympathetic outlets scrambling pathetically to find some weak-sauce example of a trans woman who won something, anything, to hold up as evidence for this nonexistent trend. Some might even say that niche, lower-stakes competitive environments are great places for sports to practice maximal inclusivity, because that can encourage people of all shapes and sizes to be more active and challenge themselves to do their best.
To that, of course, we say: Remember gravel riding???? A trans woman won the 40-49 age bracket in the 100 mile category of the Desert Gravel Co2uT!!! WAKE UP SHEEPLE! IT’S NOT JUST OVER 70s EPEE FENCING, IT’S GRAVEL RIDING 40-49s TOO!!!
Ah, touché!
UPDATE: An article describing the event from USA Fencing described Kocab as having “found success at every level of Vet fencing, having won world championships in all three age categories: 50s, 60s and 70+.” However eligibility and classification materials available from USA Fencing list five categories: 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, 70+ and 80+. While Assigned was not able to immediately clear up the seeming discrepancy, we added a screenshot of the source we used to describe the three categories, as well as this note with further information calling into question how many categories there are.