Its really hard for me to see a fair solution to this. She clearly has an advantage over women with typical hormone levels however to make her choose between not running again or taking hormones to lower her testosterone levels also seems very wrong to me.

One snippet I saw was that Women with these atypical hormonal levels are 1:200 000 in the general population but 1: 400 in elite female athletes. Most of them however fall under the testosterone levels set in this case I think

Athletes also appear to be divided

Thoughts?

Hang on, I need to get the biscuit barrel.

From what I heard discussed on the radio with a couple of other female ex-elites chipping in, its not just the testosterone levels. She actually has XY chromosomes, which is the male set, which means lots of other physiological attributes are male too giving extra potential performance.

Its terrible really as she has no control over the body she was born with, and I can’t imagine having med’s to reduce your natural hormone levels can be good for you? Hasn’t she decided enough is enough and packing it in after all this carry on?

#InBeforeMike

Hard cases make bad law, in this case. I can’t think of any circumstance in which a forced medical intervention in an otherwise healthy competitor would be a fair way to proceed. Artficially reducing her testosterone levels could have implications for her future health.

The sporting authorities who are pushing for this should be ashamed, frankly.

She should be allowed to compete IMO she was born like that not done anything intentional to gain an advantage. Dopers only get short bans yet she is banned for life…

Where do they draw the line? Ban people with lots of growth hormones from playing basketball ball because they have to much of an advantage?

Didn’t they say Michael Phelps had some genetic advantage by his body producing much lower levels of lactic acid than most people? Was he required to take medication for that?

A lot of things seem to be talking in the context on trans athletes and Calling it transphobic but I think that’s and entirely different (and more complicated) issue.

The other thing is that within each sex testosterone levels (and other hormones) will vary naturally between people.

Its well known it drops in males as they age and that is the argument you see used by some in some of the USA based forums for getting testosterone injections as it’s only bringing them back up to where they ‘should’ be.

Some one is always going to have some sort of physiological advantage over another, we normally call it good genetics and depending what it is it guides the sport they end up excelling in. Good genetics is not something I’ve been gifted with!

This along with more publicity about transgender female athletes is obviously causing some consternation (and confusion) in female sport.

Is the answer not separate fields for XY people, transgender and similar?

But she wasn’t even in the same league as the other athletes, unless she was off form it was a race for second. I think they reached the only sensible decision really to protect competition.

The other viable alternative is to treat it like any other para classification. Wheelchair users dont compete against able bodied athletes despite being significantly quicker in a lot of events. The trouble then is can you find anyone for her to race against?

I don’t think she is XY – I think she is something slightly different. IIRC ( and its a long time ago I learn’t this stuff) that its possible to have a damaged X chromosome that acts a bit like a Y ( a Y chromosome being an X missing bits)

XY is male. XX is female. The problem is she and others like her cannot be neatly pigeonholed into one or the other. there are various intersex syndromes including XXY. I don’t know what she is genetically

Altheletes themselves are divided. this makes an interesting read

I was sore about losing to Caster Semenya. But this decision against her is wrong
Madeleine Pape

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/01/losing-caster-semenya-decision-wrong-women-testosterone-iaaf

The ruling for having to reduce testosterone levels applies to 46xy athletes so it’s logical to assume therefore that Caster is XY

loads of this on Twitter at the moment,

her best is still still 0.97s slower than Kratochvílová

looks legit

dado virtual

Is the answer not separate fields for XY people, transgender and similar?

Ah a rational argument, Of course the discrimination would be unbearable.

Again from memery but a fair few of the eastern block female athletes of that era were XXY or intersex in other ways

I stand corrected on Caster being XY. However even if she is she is clearly externally female so XY clearly has not made her male as it should have done. I don’t think she has internal testes either as other intersex people can have

The difference being that Kratochvilova has taken drugs to end up like that , as far as we know Semenya is clean . It’s a difficult situation and somebody is going to be unhappy with the decision .

I have to say I can see no fair answer to this at all.

There’s only one true way of judging sport: everyone lines up – men, women, old, young, able and disabled – and whoever gets to the finish first is the winner.
Everything else is an arbitrary divide that we put in so that others – women, youngsters, wheelchair users – have a chance to compete.

Caster Semenya falls somewhere between these arbitrary divides. She is blameless in this of course, but her presence makes the other women runners irrelevant: they cannot beat her, so why bother doing all that training?

I would get rid of men’s and women’s sports and change it to open and women’s, making it clear that women’s is a protected category with strict rules (chromosomes, testosterone levels, etc).
Caster Semenya, as intersex, would run in the ‘open’ category. She isn’t fast enough to compete here, so in some ways it would be unfair on her, but as far as I can see it would be fairer on everyone else.

Women’s sport should not be the same as intersex sport.

People without testes don’t have testosterone levels that need to be reduced.

I can see how an individual may see that this ruling is unfair, but excluding people with xy chromosomes and testes from female competition seems reasonable, and this ruling doesn’t even go that far. As athletes can continue to compete with reduced testosterone levels and the ruling only applies to certain events.

but her presence makes the other women runners irrelevant: they cannot beat her, so why bother doing all that training?

99.9% of competitive female racers are in this position, though. They will never trouble the elite podiums, regardless of the amount of training they do. This decision to use drugs to hobble one athlete benefits only a tiny number of other elite runners.

That’s a fair point @martinhutch.
In this case, though, not only are the 99.9% not winning, they are a huge distance behind. It’s not that they cannot win, they cannot even compete.

As I said I think lowering Semenya’s testosterone is a bad idea. I don’t think that intersex athletes should be running against female athletes at all.

No solution will satisfy everybody.

thisisnotaspoon

Member

But she wasn’t even in the same league as the other athletes, unless she was off form it was a race for second. I think they reached the only sensible decision really to protect competition.

Is protecting competition desirable? Should we do it in other cases when someone is running away? Frinstance, should a rule have been brought in on lactic acid production or hypermobility, to hamper Michael Phelps? Or something have been found to penalise Rossi? “Competing for second” is a side-effect of truly great athletes, it’s been the case at some time in most sports.

Sports has never been a level playing field, genetically or otherwise. Nothing is, really. I think insisting it should be is just basically daft but trying to impose it on an individual basis isn’t just daft, it’s brutally unfair. Let’s get the blood work and background for whoever takes over as best in the field and see what advantages they have. It’d never end.

This ruling is not about levelling the playing field, it’s about defining eligibility for women’s sports. If you accept that women’s sports should exist then there have to be rules to define eligibility.

As I said I think lowering Semenya’s testosterone is a bad idea. I don’t think that intersex athletes should be running against female athletes at all.

No solution will satisfy everybody.

Indeed. The “danger” here is that sports organisations around the world will start a search for more intersex youngsters in order to develop them into competitive athletes, in much the same way as cycling teams seem to have sought out folk with asthmatic conditions. Professional sport could end up as even more of a freak show than it already is

Solution aside (and I agree that there probably isn’t a ‘fair for all’ solution) part of the problem with this particular ruling is that currently it only applies to the distances that Semenya runs in (it’s been suggested that she may move up to 5000 metres to avoid taking the suppressants) and as such feels somewhat persecutory; I suspect that were she to up her distances the ruling would be extended also, heightening the effect.

Although hyperandrogenie is a disorder of females, abnormally high levels of testosterone can also occur in males (although the differential is probably less) consequently there’s a possibility that the ruling could be construed as sexist as higher than normal testosterone levels in a man will be seen as making an ‘exceptional’ athlete whilst in women it’s ‘abnormal’ and to be suppressed.

I believe that polycystic ovaries can also cause higher than normal levels of testosterone in women (although probably not so markedly).

At the end of the day, most top level athletes train as hard as each other and what makes the difference is some sort of physiological advantage; is everyone going to be chemically normalised (also, should physiologically disadvantaged athletes be medically enhanced on the grounds of competitive fairness)?

It’s an impossible situation and whatever happens someone is going lose out but

I can’t imagine having med’s to reduce your natural hormone levels can be good for you?

Millions of women alter their hormones and their bodies natural cycle and rhythm every day for the sake of contraception. It is not ideal but we make that choice for the sake of convenience.

Millions of women alter their hormones and their bodies natural cycle and rhythm every day for the sake of contraception. It is not ideal but we make that choice for the sake of convenience.

And given the amount of concern over the years around the potential serious health consequences of altering that cycle, and the extra efforts made to research and mitigate those effects, it’s a perfect example of how we should be extremely cautious before imposing them on a human without their informed consent. It should be the absolute last resort, and in my mind it’s ethically better to ban her entirely, it’s just the authorities don’t want to do this because they think it makes them look worse.

There’s only one true way of judging sport: everyone lines up – men, women, old, young, able and disabled – and whoever gets to the finish first is the winner.

It’s the only way forward. Instead of trying to contrive some kind of level playing field, the IAAF should just say that from next season there will be no distinction between athletes and therefore put the problem of finding another solution back to everyone complaining about the current set up.

There was a professor of medical ethics on 5Live who made an interesting point – IAAF/CAS are penalising Caster Dementia for having the wrong genetic mutation. Other mutations that make people very tall, strong, long limbed, super flexible or have super high VO2 max or lactate threshold trainability are allowed.

Personally I am not sure about this but it’s really difficult ethics.

Also Caster is only 4th fastest of all time – 3rd is Pamela Jelimo in 2008 so well after the state sponsored doping of the 1970s and 80s

On a similar theme, I recommend the Radiolab podcast epsiode on Dutee Chand

https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/dutee?tab=summary

In 2014, India’s Dutee Chand was a rising female track and field star, crushing national records. But then, that summer, something unexpected happened: she failed a gender test. And was banned from the sport. Before she knew it, Dutee was thrown into the middle of a controversy that started long before her, and continues on today: how to separate males and females in sport.

There’s only one true way of judging sport: everyone lines up – men, women, old, young, able and disabled – and whoever gets to the finish first is the winner.

Tempted to agree with this as everything else seems to be a dodgy work around.
Somebody comes along who is a freak and destroys the opposition. Happened before, get over it.

There’s only one true way of judging sport: everyone lines up – men, women, old, young, able and disabled – and whoever gets to the finish first is the winner.

This would also neatly get around the Trans issue.

Elite athletes are so far off the normal spectrum, one should hardly be surprised that there will be inequality even in their ranks. Look at the height distribution of female volleyball players, for example. Personally I think the research into the tails of distributions of hormone levels is flawed, that Caster is being singled out – why not the 100/200m, and that the situation is unfair on her.

I also believe that this ruling has no bearing whatsoever on trans issues.

BTW her personal medical details are not in the public domain, only her repeatable endogenous testosterone levels.

I don’t think she has internal testes either as other intersex people can have

Said on the radio she does. Also said it would have been picked up at birth here but not in her country. No idea if any of that’s true but it’s what was said.

caster is genetically male if you go by the ruling noted above. Likely to have CAIS so has internal testicles, no womb or ovaries a small vaginal canal. The medalists of the woman’s 800m 2016 olymics are all intersexed. The problem is that lowering the testosterone levels probably isn’t going to do that much now.

The principle of segregation gender in sport is wrong if they able-bodied.

By segregating the gender then they have just reinforced than there is a weaker gender.

Let them all compete as one and problem solved.

Simple.

🤔

Again I stand corrected on the internal testes

Also said it would have been picked up at birth here but not in her country. No idea if any of that’s true but it’s what was said.

I think this probably is true and in cases like this the parents ( if its picked up) have the choice to make the baby a boy or girl via surgery and hormone treatment or the choice is made for them by the circumstances but the baby is treated to make the sex clear.

She has a genetic advantage, so what? Why are we punishing her when we celebrate Usain Bolt, he has the ACTN3 gene which allows muscles to respond quicker and Michael Phelps produces less lactic acid than your average individual. Surely if we expect Caster to medicate to suppress her natural advantage then it should be extended to those who also have an advantage in their sport

As far as I’ve heard, apart from her having unusually high testosterone levels, her actual levels, her genetics and whether or not she has internal testes are not in the public domain, so the various claims in this thread are rumour or allegation only.
I think Caster Semenya has been treated dreadfully. Also, why is the restriction on testosterone levels only for the distances she happens to run and not for ALL distances?
It’s been said many times before, but testosterone levels are just one of many genetic advantages enjoyed by top athletes. Why pick on Caster Semenya?