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Transgender Swimmer Given Choice Of Harvard's Men's, Women's Teams. Schuyler Bailar will swim on the men's team at Harvard this fall.

Transgender Swimmer Given Choice Of Harvard's Men's, Women's Teams

Images Etc Ltd/Getty Images hide caption itoggle caption Images Etc Ltd/Getty Images Schuyler Bailar will swim on the men's team at Harvard this fall. Images Etc Ltd/Getty Images The Harvard men's swim team will have a new swimmer on their team this fall: Schuyler Bailar of McLean, Va. Bailar swam with a club team while he was at Georgetown Day School where he set more than 10 team records and swam on a team with Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky, setting a national record for the 400 yard relay.

"While Bailar has always identified as male, he had not come out as transgender until after graduation. Bailar didn't know this at the time, but the women's swim coach, Stephanie Morawski, talked to the men's coach, Kevin Tyrrell. "We talked about how we're all about character and values, and I kind of gave my two cents: If we're going to say that we care about others, then this is something we should consider ... NFL illegally supplied risky painkilling drugs, former players allege in suit. Podcast: The Evolution of Anti-Doping. Photo by Welsh Government/Flickr Sprinter Tyson Gay seemed to get off easy when the U.S.

Podcast: The Evolution of Anti-Doping

Anti-Doping Agency recently announced just a one-year ban as punishment for doping during the 2012 Olympics. As he hasn’t competed since last summer, he’ll be eligible next month, news that set the sports world abuzz. But the more important aspect of his punishment is the shift it signals, ProPublica reporter David Epstein tells Steve Engelberg in this week’s podcast: Gay received his relatively lenient sanction after agreeing to inform on his former coach, the chiropractor who provided the substances, as well as NFL players and other track athletes. “Finally, this is a move to go after the sports staff -- and the coaches, who are really the infrastructure, in many cases, behind doping," Epstein says.

It’s also a way to improve the odds of catching dopers, given the many holes in the testing system, he says. Epstein agrees: “Sports are the ultimate human contrivances, right? Malcolm Gladwell: Do Genetic Advantages Make Sports Unfair? Toward the end of “The Sports Gene” (Penguin/Current), David Epstein makes his way to a remote corner of Finland to visit a man named Eero Mäntyranta.

Malcolm Gladwell: Do Genetic Advantages Make Sports Unfair?

Mäntyranta lives in a small house next to a lake, among the pine and spruce trees north of the Arctic Circle. He is in his seventies. There is a statue of him in the nearby village. “Everything about him has a certain width to it,” Epstein writes. “The bulbous nose in the middle of a softly rounded face. Mäntyranta carries a rare genetic mutation. In “The Sports Gene,” there are countless tales like this, examples of all the ways that the greatest athletes are different from the rest of us.

Epstein tells the story of Donald Thomas, who on the seventh high jump of his life cleared 7' 3.25"—practically a world-class height. Why do so many of the world’s best distance runners come from Kenya and Ethiopia? During the First World War, the U.S. The culprit turned out to be a lack of iodine. Libertarian Solutions to Sports Dilemmas. Ray Lewis Has Reportedly Used A Banned Substance For Years, But No One Cares Because It's Football.

The Sports Guy on performance-enhancing drugs. I made a deal with myself a long time ago: My column needed to capture the things I discuss with my friends.

The Sports Guy on performance-enhancing drugs

Last week, I realized that wasn’t totally happening anymore. Something of a disconnect had emerged between my private conversations and the things I wrote for Grantland/ESPN. In essence, I had turned into two people. There’s Sports Fan Me, and there’s ESPN Me. Sports Fan Me is candid, jaded, suspicious of everyone. ESPN Me sticks his head in the sand and doesn’t say anything. ESPN Me occasionally pushes narratives that he doesn’t totally believe in. ESPN Me didn’t have the balls to run two e-mails that you’re about to read. E-mail no. 1 (from David B. in Concord, North Carolina): “Why isn’t anyone questioning Ray Lewis’s miraculous recovery from a torn triceps muscle? E-mail no. 2 (from Ben Miller in Fort Worth, Texas): “Instead of Beyonce, should we change the Super Bowl halftime show to just Adrian Peterson pissing in a cup at midfield? Then again, I like Adrian Peterson. Stone Links - Is Doping Cheating?