Bailar's back eventually healed, and he began swimming again the middle of his junior year. But once the swim season ended, his mental health deteriorated, and he spent his senior year in a deep depression. He took a year off after he graduated to deal with his eating disorder.
“I was in such a deep trough at the end of my senior year — the middle of my second semester of my senior year — that I really needed to go to a rehab center to get better.”
During the 131 days he spent in treatment, Bailar said he began to realize he was transgender. But Harvard University had already recruited him to swim for the women’s team.
“I was terrified, and I thought for a while after realizing I was trans that I was going to have to quit swimming or I was going to have to ignore that I’m trans,” he said.
Harvard transgender swimmer Schuyler Bailar
The swimmer told the women’s coach that he is transgender and planned to start hormone therapy. She discussed it with the men’s coach, who invited him to swim for the men’s team. But competing on the men’s team scared Bailar.
“Because my capabilities physically at that point were way lower than any other males, especially men who are elite athletes … I would have a lot of catching up to do,” Bailar explained.
With encouragement from coaches, Bailar overcame his fear and joined the men’s team. He makes all his intervals, he said, and keeps up at practice. But he is not “near as good as I would have been on the women’s side,” he said.
"There’s a lot of other kinds of winning," Bailar added. “I get to be me, and I get to contribute to the world in a lot of different ways that are not gold medals, that I think are actually valuable to me and to other people, and that I find a lot of value in."
Related: Olympic Hopeful Creates Visibility for LGBTQ Athletes
The psychology major has told his story at speaking engagements across the country. He said there are misconceptions about transgender athletes he wants to correct.
“People worry that I’m doping because I take testosterone — that I have this steroidal advantage over other athletes, which is not the case,” he said.
He explained that the testosterone levels of trans athletes are monitored by doctors. He noted trans female athletes (who were assigned male at birth) must be on testosterone suppressants for a year before they can compete, according to International Olympic Committee guidelines.
The swimmer, who made a guest appearance on "The Ellen Show" in 2016 and was recently featured on the Olympic Channel, said he will continue telling his story.
“I really just want to be visible so people know this is possible, that I exist — not ‘I’ as in Schuyler but ‘I’ as in a trans athlete,” Bailar concluded.
OutFront is a weekly NBC Out series profiling LGBTQ people and allies who are making a difference in the community.
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October 6, 2017 at 12:24AM
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