Transgender Brookline Track Runner Has Won An Event At Every Meet This Spring

By Tom Joyce | May 13, 2024, 19:33 EDT

Chloe Barnes running in the right lane for Brookline High. Screenshot taken from MSTCA-TV YouTube channel.

Chloe Barnes is excelling at girls’ outdoor track and field this spring.

Barnes, a male who identifies as transgender, is a senior at Brookline High School. As of the start of this week, Barnes had competed in five Brookline High girls’ track meets so far this season. At those meets, Barnes competed in both the 100-meter hurdles and 400-meter hurdles and won nearly every single time.

Barnes competes in two events per meet, or 10 events this season as of the start of this week. Barnes had won eight of those 10 events, according to Athletic.net.

At three meets — April 5 against Framingham; April 24 against Wellesley; and May 1 against Walpole — Barnes had first-place finishes in both the 100-meter and 400-meter hurdles. Additionally, Barnes came in first in the 100-meter hurdle at an April 10 meet against Newton North, while finishing second in the 400-meter hurdle. Plus, Barnes won the 400-meter hurdle against Natick on May 8, while finishing second in the 100-meter hurdle.

That means that at every meet so far this season, Barnes has won at least one event.

The top performances of the season for Barnes in both events came on May 1 against Walpole — when the senior won both events. Barnes ran the 100-meter hurdle in 15.74 seconds and the 400-meter hurdle in 1:09.84, according to Athletic.net.

Last school year, Barnes helped the Brookline High indoor track and field team win a Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association Division 1 state championship last season, earning a fourth-place finish in the 55-meter dash, as NewBostonPost previously reported.

The contribution from the transgender athlete in the state championship, which NewBostonPost was the first to report on, sparked backlash in national right-wing media and from Republican politicians.  Some of those politicians included former United Nations ambassador and current Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, former California gubernatorial candidate and Olympic gold medalist Caitlyn Jenner, and U.S. Representative Mary Miller (R-Illinois), among others.

Barnes did not compete in the state championship meet in the outdoor track 2023 season, nor this indoor track season this past winter, according to Athletic.net. However, the reason for that remains unknown.

TB Daily News was the first news outlet to report on Barnes’s transgender identity in January 2023. 

Male athletes who identify as girls can compete in girls’ sports in the Commonwealth. The state allows it due to a 2011 law called “An Act Relative to Gender Identity”; it made gender identity a protected class in Massachusetts public schools. As a result, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education directed the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association to allow people to compete on teams that match their gender identity, rather than their sex.