World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka has openly criticised the idea of transgender women competing in elite women’s tennis, declaring that it creates an unfair playing field because of inherent physical advantages retained from male biology.
Speaking after her victory at the WTA Finals in Riyadh, the three-time Grand Slam champion did not hold back when asked about the participation of transgender athletes in the women’s category.
“I feel like they still got a huge advantage over the women and I think it’s not fair on women to face basically biological men. It’s not fair. The woman has been working her whole life to reach her limit and then she has to face a man, who is biologically much stronger, so for me I don’t agree with this kind of stuff in sport!”
Sabalenka’s comments come against the backdrop of the WTA Tour’s current Gender Participation Policy, which allows transgender women to compete in the women’s draw provided they have declared their gender identity as female for at least four years, have maintained testosterone levels below 2.5 nmol/L for the preceding two years, and submit to ongoing testing.
The Belarusian star’s stance aligns with a growing number of high-profile players, including Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert, who have argued that even with hormone suppression, advantages in muscle mass, bone density, lung capacity and other physiological traits developed during male puberty are not fully reversed.
While no openly transgender woman has yet reached the upper echelons of the WTA rankings under the existing policy, the debate has intensified in tennis as it has across multiple sports, with organisations facing pressure from both advocacy groups and athletes concerned about fairness and safety in competition integrity.
Sabalenka, who wrapped up the year-end No. 1 ranking for the first time in her career, made clear she believes the current rules fail to adequately protect the women’s category she has fought to dominate.