Women demand transgender Parkrun competitors born male are barred from female event – including one who has ‘finished first 100 times’

Thousands of runners around the country are to begin a mass protest calling on the parkrun event to stop allowing trans women to register as female, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The campaign starts with the launch today of the Reality Rules Runners UK club, demanding that parkrun obeys the law.

Parkrun continues to allow trans women, who were born male, to compete in the female category, allowing them to post record times and push women and girls down the weekly rankings.

The Reality Rules founders say trans women have an unfair advantage over female competitors and that it amounts to gender discrimination.

Parkrun has become a much-loved fixture in British life, with more than 1,400 events around the country.

But it appears to ignore the landmark Supreme Court ruling that trans women cannot be female for legal purposes.

The new campaign is launched as a group of leading female athletes renew their legal threat to parkrun. 

Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies, yachtswoman Tracy Edwards and the recently founded Women’s Sport Union (WSU) have given it a deadline of next Friday to ban trans women from competing as female. 

Baroness Davies told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Parkrun is an amazing thing, but it’s not right to pretend there isn’t a clear physical benefit to being born male.

‘By all means, get rid of male and female categories and have a free-for-all, or have integrity and do as the Supreme Court says. A women’s category is for people born female.

‘Instead, parkrun is trying to have it every which way. Allowing transwomen to compete as female is not only completely unfair, it is illegal.’ 

The founder of the new campaign, who wishes to remain anonymous, urged runners to sign up by adding the name of the Reality Rules Runners UK club to their online parkrun profile.

He said: ‘This will bring together people from across the political spectrum, male and female, who agree on one very basic point: Biological sex is real and women deserve fair sport.

‘I speak to so many women who believe the policy is unfair but don’t feel able to say so publicly.

‘They don’t want to make themselves a target. Reality Rules Runners will allow people to stand together and show that support for fairness in women’s sport is neither extreme nor niche.

‘People are often given the impression that only a small minority object to males being included in female categories, but that simply isn’t true. There are thousands of parkrunners who believe sex-based categories matter. This club will give them a way to come together, physically show up and be counted.

‘We want parkrunners all over the UK to join the club, turn up at their local events and make the strength of feeling impossible to ignore.’

‘The results are published each week, and parkrunners can see where they placed and compare how they performed to others in the same sex and age categories. But this is only fair if sex means biological sex not the “gender” someone feels they are.

‘We need to pull together to protest and send a clear and loud message that fairness in women’s sports matters.’

Former British marathon runner Mara Yamauchi, who monitors parkrun, has told the MoS that no fewer than 20 record times for female competitors at local parkruns are held by trans women. In two instances, they hold female course records.

Ellie Davies spent five years competing in the men’s category. It is said that since moving into the female category, Davies has been recorded as the first female finisher at 100 parkruns

One of these – at the Jubilee parkrun in Bedford – is held by Ellie Davies, who spent five years competing in the men’s category. Yamauchi says that, since moving into the female category, Davies has been recorded as the first female finisher at 100 parkruns.

In June Davies finished first in a record time for the Jubilee course while registered as female, and yesterday finished as the fastest female at the Watermeadows parkrun in Towcester, Northamptonshire. Yet Davies entered the 2025 London Marathon in the male category.

The other female course record is held by Lauren Jeska, a trans woman who completed Aberystwyth parkrun in 17 minutes 38 seconds, still listed as the female record holder.

Jeska was jailed for 18 years in 2017 for the attempted murder of athletics official Ralph Knibbs, whom Jeska stabbed after concerns were raised about Jeska’s eligibility to take part in women’s athletics.

‘You don’t have to be a very good male athlete to break female records,’ comments Ms Yamauchi, a former diplomat and one of the country’s most successful marathon runners, represented Britain at the Beijing and London Olympics.

‘All that’s required of a man is to be reasonably good,’ she says. ‘And the result is that week after week, female runners are swindled out of their achievements by transwomen who could and should run in the open category.’

According to Ms Yamauchi, trans women have beaten female runners on nearly 300 occasions since the free competition began.

She is among those backing the launch of Reality Rules Runners UK.

Parkrun began with just 13 runners at London’s Bushy Park in 2004 but has grown into one of Britain’s largest grassroots sporting movements. Participants can run, jog, walk or volunteer.

There were mixed views at yesterday’s Highbury Fields parkrun, where some runners insisted participation and inclusion were more important than competition or politics.

Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies (pictured), yachtswoman Tracy Edwards and the recently founded Women’s Sport Union (WSU) have given a deadline of next Friday to ban trans women from competing as female

Others, such as Oli Cheney, 44, backed the protests. ‘You can’t have men competing against females, it’s not fair,’ he said. ‘Especially when they’ve trained all their lives and they’ve worked really hard, and they should be competing with other women.

‘It’s like saying the cat and the fish are the same thing. You can call a cat a fish if you want, but it won’t swim.’

Su Wong, spokesman for the Sex Equality And Equity Network (SEEN) In Sport said that parkrun has received millions of pounds in taxpayer money. 

‘This is with the aim of increasing female recreational activity. Yet parkrun can’t verify female numbers as it allows males to register in the female category.

‘Why should women and girls have to put up with people born male taking female course records or with them bumping us down in the rankings? Sex matters, fairness matters and the law matters. There are no more excuses for discriminating against women and girls.’

Fiona McAnena from the Sex Matters campaign group agreed, saying: ‘Parkrun may think accurate women’s results aren’t important, but it knows parkrunners care about their performance and their placing. At parkruns around the country, ‘first female’ places are taken by men.

‘The message from parkrun to women and girls is this: your achievements don’t matter, we put these men’s feelings ahead of yours, and you should too.

‘But the law is clear: when a sporting event offers a female category, that is a category for women. It shouldn’t include some men.’

A spokesman for parkrun said: ‘We are a charity offering community-led, socially focused events delivered by volunteers with the aim of improving public health and community cohesion.’

Additional reporting by Lydia Veljanovski. Visit realityrulesrunnersuk.substack.com or find them on X: @RRRunnersuk