British Cycling’s new ‘Open’ category “patently designed to make sure that transgender women will compete at a major disadvantage”, says “perplexed” transgender cyclist

If you read the article there is comment from women athletes supporting this change.
Unfortunately I don't believe athletes should have a say, their role is to beat the opposition so they are always likely to seek to exclude anyone they perceive has an advantage.
I have said many times that I don't have the answer, but I do think that the experience of Philippa York has more relevance to the issue than Nicole Cooke (of whom I am a great admirer for her cycling ability AND her advocacy for women's equality in sport). The problem is that often mainstream media and culture warriors find it easy to recruit marginalised groups to fight each other rather than joining forces to defeat the real enemy which is narrow minded bigotry.
I always remember hearing Tom Robinson talking about founding Rock Against Racism in the 70s. As a guy man he knew what discrimination was like, but chose to campaign on behalf of another marginalised group as well as his own. He is also on record about his frustration at the ever fracturing LGBTQIA+ alphabet, which he sees as weakening the voice against discrimination as a whole.
For clarity I am not accusing you of taking a discriminatory position.

I for one am happy to suggest dubwises' language makes me strongly suspect they are discrimination adjacent. 

Other posters (other threads) have suggested possible different ways of changing the existing contest. In case BC flip-flops again what would you suggest they do?

I'm guessing "let all women race together, end of"- but I'm just interested if there's any possibility of any other kind of change being acceptable? Even as a stop-gap on the way to "how it should be"?

There just aren't enough trans women racing to justify putting on separate races for them, though maybe it might change in a sort of 'if you build it they will come' fashion.
One possible stopgap would be to allow them to race in a lower ability category against cis-men. As an example, the British Masters Cycle Racing organisation (for the over 40s) - which categorises races by age in 5 year bands - allows women to race against men in an older age group. Someone who is currently racing as a 1st category ('cat') woman could enter 2nd cat male races, or even 3rds. If they're good enough they'll score enough points to move up the rankings, though admittedly it's highly unlikely they'd ever be competitive at Elite level

Or even race in the women's races in a separate category with seperate points and medals. Perhaps in return BC could sponsor and also ask all members of the category to participate in a 3 year monitoring research program that will collect data showing just how much or little advantage trans women have. 

Secret_squirrel, that sounds much more sympathetic. I think to expect a trans women to race in an 'open' category that in practice will predominantly be cis male would just be asking her to accept an utterly humiliating situation, after all she would be associated with an identity she will have intentionally left at significant personal cost. In practice she would simply have nowhere to race.

So are you for or against inclusion of people into categories into which a subset have an innate sex-based performance benefit then?

Addendum: To be clear, you are arguing that it is unfair to make people of group B compete with those in group A, because A have a distinct advantage over B. On that basis, you argue that B should compete with people of group C. Yet, B have a distinct advantage over C.

By your own logic, surely that means C should not have to be made to compete with B?

And to be clear, groups A and B are competing with the innate hormonal system they developed with. Group B are in this "piggy in the middle" situation of being (wrt performance due to hormones) A > B > C because of their psychology (or medical condition or whatever is the correct way to class it - forgive me if I don't have it right) and medical treatment choices they made a result.

If I am in Group A, and I am approaching or past 50, and my doctor advises me to take testosterone treatment for medical reasons, should I still be allowed to compete?

If BC are happy to tinker with race categories, as demonstrated, then they could have created an Open category alongside Women and Men, that anyone could compete in.

Better still, change the Women to Female, as defined by chromosomal testing, and Men to Male, also as defined. Racers are already tested for other things, adding karyotype testing isn't a big deal. And if you ain't XX or XY, or refuse to be tested, you race in the Open.

And I look forward to future revelations that this rider or that racer is really XXY, or XYY, or XXX, or some other hybrid. Even some of you reading this may not be the sex you think you are. How about that?

MissyChrissy wrote:

If BC are happy to tinker with race categories, as demonstrated, then they could have created an Open category alongside Women and Men, that anyone could compete in.

The open category is open to all. If you're arguing for a trans specific category, no one would be against that, if there was demand. Also, no objection from me - and likely most anyone else - to recognise best trans finisher in the open category.

MissyChrissy wrote:

Better still, change the Women to Female, as defined by chromosomal testing, and Men to Male, also as defined. Racers are already tested for other things, adding karyotype testing isn't a big deal. And if you ain't XX or XY, or refuse to be tested, you race in the Open.

There's no need for this. 99.99%+ of people know fine well what their biological sex is - we can just ask them.

MissyChrissy wrote:

And I look forward to future revelations that this rider or that racer is really XXY, or XYY, or XXX, or some other hybrid. Even some of you reading this may not be the sex you think you are. How about that?

This is a tiny tiny tiny number, and as someone explained to you in the comments of another story, even amongst those with (very) rare chromosonal inter-sex conditions the majority of those are still physiologically consistent with the sex they present as.

This isn't the killer argument you think it is.

Examples of people not being the sex they were racing as would be Castor Semenya. Had a development disorder causing her family to treat her as female from early on (if not birth), but is actually (physiologically) a man. There were probably a handful of other cases like this, at olympic level sport in the last century.

Note: You avoided answering any of my questions above directly.