Robbed By Olympic Dopers In ’76, A Liberal Lawmaker Now Battles Transgenders In Sports

This article was written by Karen Crouse and published on Sport & State, a new media company founded by Clay Travis that is built around sports, culture, original voices, and live conversation.
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If anybody can sympathize with the volleyball player, Payton McNabb, who was knocked unconscious during a girls’ high school varsity match when she was struck in the face by a ball spiked by an opponent assigned male at birth, it’s the North Carolina Democrat House member Marcia Morey.

Morey experienced firsthand the misery of competing against opponents who held an unfair advantage. At the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Morey, a seven-time national swimming champion who was ranked in the top 3 in the world in both breaststroke events at the year’s start, failed to make it out of prelims of either of her specialties.

The East German women, who had barely caused a ripple four years prior, won 10 of 11 individual events, finishing 1-2 in four of them, and sweeping the podium in a fifth. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world would find out what their competitors had long suspected; that the East German women had been part of a state-sponsored doping system.

Given Morey’s personal history, it was startling to learn that she and McNabb were on opposite sides of a state bill restricting transgender females from playing on women’s sports league teams at the middle school, high school and college levels.

McNabb was paraded before the national assembly by Republican legislators championing The Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which requires sports participation, regardless of one’s gender identity, to be based on their assigned sex at birth. Morey opposed the bill, which, on the surface of it, made no sense. How could an athlete who had been demoralized by women holding a chemical advantage champion those in women’s sports who have a built-in physiological advantage?

I had interviewed Morey in 2004 for a package of stories in The Palm Beach Post on the 1976 US Olympic women’s swim team and the long-term repercussions many of them experienced after the adults in charge stood by and said nothing as the East German women with their deep voices, muscular builds and facial hair prospered. I reached out to Morey, who was in the final stretch of her campaign for a sixth term in the North Carolina State House, to help me make sense of her stance.

She got back to me promptly, and our exchanges over the next few days served as a reminder of the complexities of issues that get refracted through a political lens to stoke cultural wars.

“That’s very interesting that someone seems to think I am okay with transgender women competing in world-class athletics,” Morey said. “I am not. Our experience in 1976 proved the unfairness of medical steroids and hormones injected into female athletes, all for victory on a world-stage podium.”

She added, “I do agree an even playing field is essential. And the older a child is, or higher the level of competition, there should not be an unfair biological advantage, just like there was an unfair chemical advantage with the East Germans in 1976.”

The North Carolina bill that became law in 2023-24 originally banned kindergartners and grade schoolers from participating on sports teams, leagues and even intramural sports that did not correspond to their sex assigned at birth, which Morey resisted. Intramural sports were dropped from consideration, but one of the reasons she ultimately voted against the bill was because of its inclusion of middle school-aged participants.

Her position was informed, in part, by parents who told her about their “now new daughter” who simply wanted to participate in a sport for the many benefits of physical activity and to socialize with kids their age.

Morey’s belief is the benefits to 10, 11, and 12-year-olds of learning fundamental skills, making friends, practicing sportsmanship and developing self-confidence outweigh any innate physiological advantages a prepubescent assigned male at birth has over biological girls.

“They are looking to fit in, not stand out competitively,” said Morey, who also takes exception to the politicization of transgender kids in sports.

“The issue has become a good vs. evil culture war that’s also an attack on the LGBTQ community as a whole,” Morey said. “I’m all about justice and fairness, but the political rhetoric is harming a lot of young, innocent children.”

Both sides have turned the issue into a cultural and political hot potato, as was borne out in correspondent Russ Douthat‘s 60 Minutes interview with Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, which aired Sunday. Asked about transgender athletes in girls’ sports, El-Sayed dismissed it as a manufactured social issue and intimated that biological boys being allowed in girls’ locker rooms isn’t a big deal because kids are already exposed through their internet to everyone’s different body parts.

Yes. This is Abdul’s argument. Your young daughter will see dicks on the Internet so she might as well see them in her locker room too.

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) November 2, 2026

El-Sayed added that he’s not running “to govern sports.” It’s a familiar refrain among legislators, including Morey, who view eligibility rules as an issue best left to sports governing bodies, much to the frustration of the civil rights lawyer Nancy Hogshead.

Like Morey, Hogshead competed against the East German women during their steroid era, though not at the Olympics. The GDR was among the nineteen countries that boycotted the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles, where Hogshead raced to three golds.

The uneven playing field she was helpless to correct has informed Hogshead’s decades-long work as a fierce legal advocate for women’s sports. Hogshead, the CEO of Champion Women, an organization engaged in restricting sports spaces to those assigned female at birth, said, “When I hear what Marcia is saying, I hear a very typical fear. No one wants to be on the other side of the trans women activists, who are quite violent.”

She said, “One of the reasons why I stayed in this battle is because nobody stood up for us against the East Germans. We were all told not to say anything about steroids.”

And remember for 20yrs the IOC allowed East Germany to drug its female athletes meaning women lost out & young East German girls died prematurely

— Sharron Davies HoL MBE (@sharrond62) June 3, 2025

They were told to be quiet then, Hogshead said, in the same fashion that Riley Gaines, among others, was silenced 38 years later when a biological male, Lia Thomas, competed alongside her at the 2022 NCAA Division I Swimming and Diving championships.

“So, I was like, ‘Okay, I can do it,’” Hogshead said. Naming the tennis player Martina Navratilova, a 59-time Grand Slam champion in singles, doubles and mixed doubles, and the swimmer Donna DeVarona, a two-time Olympic champion in 1964, as others who have taken up the fight, Hogshead said, “We can continue speaking up on behalf of females. We have the stature, the history, the credibility to be able to. If we’re out front, we can get other people to come along.”

Their advocacy has affected change. One year after Thomas was crowned an NCAA women’s individual champion, the national governing body of the sport, USA Swimming, established a limit on testosterone levels that transgender women must maintain for at least three years to be cleared for competition. In addition, they must provide evidence, to be reviewed by a panel of medical experts, that they do not enjoy a competitive advantage as a result of having been assigned male at birth.

500 free final @IvyLeague championships: Lia Thomas, formerly of the @PennSwimDive men’s team, won by over 7 seconds. You can hardly see the other women swimming at the far end of the pool by the time the race is over. For the women, “it was a race for second place.” https://t.co/3ItZnsGMtR

— Emily Kreps (@ekreps) February 18, 2022

Two years later, the NCAA decreed that only student-athletes assigned female at birth may compete in NCAA women’s sports, though a biological male who identifies as female is able to practice with women’s teams.

Also in 2025, the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee enacted an athlete safety policy that requires the national governing bodies under its purview to be in alignment with an executive order issued by President Trump that tracked the NCAA policy.

And in March of this year, the International Olympic Committee, the international governing body for Olympic sports, revised its transgender policy to restrict eligibility for any female category event to biological females as determined by a one-time screening for the SRY gene, a key determinant of male sex development.

It’s a different story at the grassroots level. Twenty-one states, including Washington, allow all students the freedom to participate in athletics in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity. The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association policy paved the way this fall for a biological male, Logan Mihailoff, to switch, mid-season, from the boys’ cross country team to the girls’ squad. In a regional race on Halloween, Mihailoff finished seventh to qualify for the girls’ state championships and help the Camas HS girls’ team qualify for the team event (without Mihailoff’s points, another team would have advanced in Camas’ place).

Camas, Washington — regional girls cross country race. Logan Mihailoff takes off, assuming a top spot early in the race. He competed on the boys team in early September, always bottom of the pack.

Now it appears he’ll make State in the girls’ division. https://t.co/KJ03Fv7LZO

— Jennifer Sey (@JenniferSey) October 31, 2026

“That’s the guideline they are governed by,” Morey said. Each athlete has the freedom to “decide for herself,” she said, how to proceed — as she did in the 1970s against the East Germans and also in college at Division III Millikin University in her hometown of Decatur, Ill., where she competed on the men’s team and was occasionally banned from racing by opposing coaches.

Morey swam on the men’s team because the university didn’t field a women’s team at the time. The 1972 passage of Title IX, a landmark Civil Rights law that prohibited sex-based discrimination in any school program that receives federal funding, led to the carving out for women of their own competitive space through the proliferation of women’s sports teams at the high school and college levels.

On Tuesday, Washington residents were voting on a ballot measure to require biological sex verification for girls’ sports from kindergarten through twelfth grade. In the meantime, some girls, including a few from Camas High, have refused to run in races in which Mihailoff is entered.

“If it unfairly skews competition results, that may be a different issue that the governing body should take into consideration,” said Morey, who, like Hogshead, had her life’s work informed by her Olympic experience. Her humanistic approach, with its emphasis on individual dignity and well-being, was shaped by the ongoing friendship she forged with one of her East German rivals, Renate Vogel, who she came to see as a victim, too, of the cheating culture forced upon her.

Noting that the East Germans were, as she described it, “pawns of their government” who were given steroids without their knowledge or consent, Morey said, “We may have lost our races, but they lost their freedom.”

Before Morey became a legislator, she served as a circuit court judge in North Carolina where her work primarily revolved around juveniles and criminal justice, the judiciary and public safety.

The kids labeled “punks” and “thugs” that came through her courtroom were rarely committing the monstrous acts that generated the headlines, she said. Those were the outliers, whose actions were not a reflection, she said, of the kids she saw whose lives were lacking support and guidance.

Morey believes the outliers whose gender identities do not match their sex assigned at birth deserve support, but it’s complicated. She found her stance articulated in a petition to support fair and safe sports for girls and women spearheaded by Hogshead’s organization.

The third paragraph caught Morey’s eye: “We support inclusion for all, but in the appropriate sport category. Males identifying as transgender, non-binary, gender-fluid, or any other identity are encouraged to compete in the male category. These athletes are encouraged to follow the lead of females, who overwhelmingly compete in their sex category, the women’s category, regardless of their gender identity.”

That standpoint, Morey said, “is great and acknowledges inclusion and support for transgender athletes in the appropriate category.” She added, “I’d support the petition.”

In 1976, Morey said she felt defeated before she stepped on the blocks in Montreal, having watched the East German women shatter world records right and left in the lead-up to the Olympics. The feeling that she had let down her family, her community, and her country on her sport’s biggest stage weighed heavily on Morey. It didn’t help that she was surrounded by adults who advised her not to complain or speak out. Instead of a medal, she came away from the Olympics with anorexia nervosa.

“I couldn’t see my self-worth,” said Morey, who struggled with the eating disorder for several years.

Similarly, McNabb, the volleyball player, said her encounter with the opponent assigned male at birth has left her with long-term mental health issues, including anxiety and depression. Though opposites politically, Morey and McNabb share this single truth: In battles waged on unlevel playing fields, the wounds leave lasting scars.

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