With trans participation under threat, fringe sports are bucking the trend

It’s not quite a white elephant, but it’s an aging, multi-million-dollar Olympic venue that towers over its suburban surrounds in south-west Sydney.

25 years on from the six glorious days of cycling it hosted at the 2000 Games, the Dunc Gray Velodrome now sits empty for much of the week and the 3,000 permanent seats that hug the outside of its bike track are rarely, if ever, filled.

It’s a vast piece of architecture — cavernous, expansive, echoing.

And nowadays often wet, thanks to an increasingly leaky roof.

Since 2007, the venue has hosted the Sydney Roller Derby League (SRDL), whose members play a competitive, full-contact re-imagining of the dramatised, WWE-style 20th-century incarnation of the sport.

It’s full-on, it’s uncompromising and it also retains some of the glamour from its previous life as a performance sport, with each player choosing or being given a derby alter ego that informs the way they play the game.

“It’s like playing chess on roller skates while someone throws bricks at you,” “Get Bucky”, a long time SRDL member, told ABC Sport.

But above all else, what SRDL members say sets derby apart is its approach to gender inclusivity at a time when mainstream sports are often failing to provide homes for their gender-diverse players.

A world-leading gender policy

In February this year, SRDL implemented the updated gender policy recommended by the sport’s US-based global governing body, the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA).

The policy is considered one of the most progressive in world sport, and encourages the participation of any individual of what WFTDA calls a “Marginalised Gender”, regardless of their presentation or gender they were assigned at birth.

It allows for trans women and men as well as non-binary people to play alongside cis women and is at odds with US President Donald Trump’s February 5 executive order to exclude transgender girls and women from female sports.

“Rampage”, a non-binary SRDL stalwart and coach, says the community has provided many of its skaters an opportunity for genuine gender expression.

“It provides avenues for people who don’t necessarily get accepted as they are in their day-to-day lives to be able to come to a roller derby session and be accepted as who they are,” they said.

Returning home

“Commando” started skating with SRDL not long before their 40th birthday.

“Since my mid to late teens, I’ve always described my gender as mine,” Commando said.

“I knew I wasn’t a man, I didn’t feel like I was a woman.

“I wasn’t either — but I also wasn’t necessarily in the middle.”

After years spent running nightclubs in the gothic and industrial music scenes, they said finding roller derby and the wider queer community was vital to better understanding their relationship with gender.

“I realised that I’m not by myself, I’m not someone with a gender that’s just mine,” Commando said.

“There’s a lot of us who don’t live within the gender binary and there is terminology that we can use.”

However, while Commando has always felt at home within the Sydney roller derby community, previous gender policies had meant things had not always been so straightforward on court.

The WFTDA’s first gender statement was published in 2011. At the time, it was one of the most progressive policies in the world and included protections for trans women within it.

But a reliance on an individual having “sex hormones that are in the medically acceptable range for a female” meant that people like Commando were excluded.

Since then, the WFTDA policy has evolved alongside its community, with subsequent updates removing any reference to hormones and furthering protections for trans and gender-non-conforming athletes.

“Now, if you feel like WFDTA League is your home, then that’s your home, and that’s all that WFTDA cares about,” Commando said.

“There’s a lot of things to love about that.

“For me personally, it means that I’ve been able to return home.”

Ryan Storr, an academic with the Sport Innovation Research Group at Swinburne University, says “fringe” sports such as roller derby are consistently over-represented when it comes to queer and gender-diverse sporting participation, largely due to their willingness to evolve with their communities.

“When issues arise, they’re more likely to work through a solution and amend and update practices to reflect that,” Dr Storr said.

“Whereas mainstream sports are more likely to be ‘these are the rules, we can’t do anything about it.'”

The growth of LGBTQIA+ sport on the fringes

In recent years, many smaller, newer sports have experienced significant growth within LGBTQIA+ communities.

Dr Storr was the lead researcher on the 2024 Free to Exist Report.

It found 53 per cent of LGBTIQA+ young people had witnessed discrimination within sport settings and 40 per cent had experienced discrimination.

Dr Storr said that because niche sports were newer, they were more able to design structures and programs that were inclusive, while it was also in the best interest of a growing sport to be more malleable to the evolving needs of its community.

“I think mainstream sports are very much like ‘oh, we’ve got enough’ or ‘this is too hard,'” Dr Storr said.

“Whereas, from my experience, those smaller sports don’t see it like that — they work through and see what they can do to get a person playing.”

Kade Matthews is the community engagement officer at Proud 2 Play — a not-for-profit co-founded by Dr Storr that fights LGBTQIA+ discrimination in sport — and is also the co-founder of Australia’s first LGBTQIA+ ice hockey club, Southern Lights.

Since 2019, Southern Lights has grown to encompass 140 players across seven teams in Melbourne and has promoted the creation of a Sydney sister club, Harbour Lights.

“Ice hockey has been a really good success because I find that the queer community goes towards those niche sports because they’ve already been pushed out of many of the major sports,” Matthews told ABC Sport.

“So when you’re in a niche or a smaller sport, you have more control over the environment.

“And that means it’s easier to find people, easier to find community.”

All Harbour and Southern Lights teams are mixed-gender, and teams are delineated on playing ability alone.

Laura Morris is a member of the Sydney-based team.

“It doesn’t matter what part of the community you come from, we are able to embrace all aspects of the community based on skill level, based on sex, based on anything,” she said.

‘Everyone’s just as shit as each other’

Many of SRDL’s members have been involved in the sport for over a decade. That’s despite the fact that many players join the league having never skated before.

Rampage believes this is one of the beauties of the sport.

“Roller skating is such an abnormal skill, it’s really a great equaliser for lots of people,” Rampage said.

“When you put skates on for the first time, everyone’s just as shit as each other.

“It’s phenomenally grounding for everyone.”

For people who may not have had a sporting home in the past, such a level playing field can be attractive.

And with numerous SRDL members preparing for international competition at this year’s World Cup, there is clearly plenty of room for sporting development.

Get Bucky — who has been involved with the league for over a decade — said that the longevity and loyalty of SLDR’s playing base could be largely attributed to its progressive gender outlook.

“We don’t have to think about it — we don’t have to make a fuss about it,” she said.

“I don’t really question who’s on track with me.

“If you’re on track with me, you’re supposed to be.”

As many mainstream sporting bodies continue to grapple — often messily — with policies surrounding transgender and non-binary inclusion, Dr Storr believes there can be much taken from organisations like the one that has flourished in the leaky-roofed Olympic venue on the south-west fringe of Sydney.

“Ultimately, most of the major sports could learn a lot from fringe sports in terms of how to retain and keep queer communities coming back.”

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