‘Stars on Mars’: Disgraced Athlete Lance Armstrong Faces Backlash From Contestants for Saying Trans Athletes Should Have Their “Own Category”

After Lance Armstrong was met with intense scrutiny for his take on trans athletes in sports, he was met with even more resistance to his views from his Stars on Mars castmates.

On Monday’s (July 10) episode of the reality show, the disgraced athlete told professional wrestler Ronda Rousey that he had been invited onto a podcast to discuss “transgender stuff in sports.”

“I said, ‘Listen, this is real simple: You want to transition, let’s do it. You have your own category,'” he said, per Entertainment Weekly. “‘We’re gonna have a whole new division. We’ll celebrate you just like we celebrate everybody else. Let’s go.’ What’s unfair about that?”

Singer Tinashe was the first one to step in and address Armstrong’s comments: “To me, I think we just have to care about if you ‘otherize’ people. It’s not good for their mental health,” she said, adding that it would “exclude them from the same spaces and places that everyone else.”

Modern Family star Ariel Winter also accused Armstrong of “ostracizing” trans athletes.

Armstrong disagreed, arguing, “Actually, no, we’re not excluding anybody. And, by the way, I sound like a right-wing lunatic. I’m not. I’m the most liberal person, but from a sporting perspective…”

Olympic medalist Adam Rippon later said he found Armstrong’s comments “so disheartening.” The figure skater said Armstrong’s words “have completely shifted the energy and have completely shifted the focus, and I will not ever forget them.”

Have we really come to a time and place where spirited debate is not only frowned upon, but feared? Where people’s greatest concern is being fired, shamed or cancelled? As someone all too familiar with this phenomenon, I feel I'm uniquely positioned to have these conversations. pic.twitter.com/De7xs3PUq3

— Lance Armstrong (@lancearmstrong) June 25, 2023

In a confessional, Tinashe said she wasn’t surprised by Armstrong’s words, but pointed out the hypocrisy of the famous cheater to weigh in on ethics.

“I wasn’t really shocked to hear his opinions, but I definitely didn’t think that he should be the spokesperson for that,” Tinashe said in a confessional.

Tinashe was likely referring to Armstrong’s checkered past as a professional athlete, during which the former professional cyclist was stripped of his seven Tour de France wins after he admitted to using performance enhancing drugs throughout his career.

His comments on the recent Stars on Mars episode, which was likely filmed in April or May of this year, would not be the last time Armstrong has addressed this issue. In June, he shared a thread on Twitter to promote his new podcast The Forward, which now has at least seven episodes dedicated to discussing trans athletes in sports. The thread included a clip from the first episode with guest Caitlyn Jenner.

“Have we really come to a time and place where spirited debate is not only frowned upon, but feared? Where people’s greatest concern is being fired, shamed or cancelled? As someone all too familiar with this phenomenon, I feel I’m uniquely positioned to have these conversations,” Armstrong tweeted.

While a number of people replied to his tweet calling out Armstrong’s hypocrisy for proclaiming who can and cannot participate in sports, a community note included below Armstrong’s tweet added a disclaimer.

The note stated, “Armstrong was the most dominant and successful professional cyclist in history, until 2013 when he was found to have been doping and was stripped of his titles and awards. Armstrong himself later admitted to cheating for over a decade.”

Stars on Mars airs Mondays at 8/7c on Fox.