Linsey Sharp – sour grapes or not? ( Olympics & hyperandrogenism content )

Don’t know how many of you have seen the post 800m women’s race interview with Brit Linsey Sharp, but she seemed rather upset at the officials for letting Caster Semenya compete.
Sharp ran a PB but only managed a sixth place.
The fifth placed Polish athlete shares her view, even saying she feels like a silver medalist.
Do they have a point or is it sour grapes ?

There are many articles about this but here are two links to firstly Sharp’s response and then Jozwik’s response .

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/21/lynsey-sharp-criticises-obvious-hypoadrogenous-women-having-bein/

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/rio-2016-joanna-jozwik-caster-semenya-800m-hyperandrogenism-a7203731.html?amp

Most of the world’s greatest athletes have quirks of physiology which give them the potential to be extraordinary. Most of the rest of us come to terms with the fact that, no matter how hard we train, our genetic inheritance means we do not have that potential, or even the potential to be in the same race.

It may seem unfair, but it’s the same natural variation at play, albeit a pretty big one here. The alternatives – reverse doping to reduce androgen levels, or banning Caster altogether, are far worse.

The other athletes do need to remember that their dignity is probably worth more than finishing 5th instead of 6th.

There was a good podcast from Off The Ball on Newstalk in Ireland a couple of weeks ago. One person was advocating that Semenya should be taking a testosterone controlling drug to bring her testosterone level into a certain band. One of the argument was that if the same was applied to men’s sport where some men have a natural high level of testosterone.
Someone mentioned that athletes will try and have kids 2 years out from a major championship as there is a natural boost to hormone levels which can aid their performance??

Before anyone comments I’d strongly recommend they read all of this…

Hyperandrogenism and women vs women vs men in sport: A Q&A with Joanna Harper

Think it’s just about the most thorny and complex issue the IAAF have to deal with, which is probably why they aren’t. Semenya is probably the most obvious example of this but there are many others in women’s sport.

MrBlobby I’m afraid that article is far to long for me!
If everyone have to read that before they comment then this thread of mine will die a silent death.
I’m interested in STWers gut instinct and replies.
Martinhutch you make a good point about dignity outweighing a fifth or sixth place.
If you read between the lines the athletes who got silver and bronze are also deemed as having more than their fair share of natural testosterone .

I’m interested in STWers gut instinct and replies.

On an issue as complicated as this? 😕

MrBlobby I’m afraid that article is far to long for me!

Ok, just this bit is worth reading. Ross Tuckers view…

Divisions must be defended.
I do not believe that women with hyperandrogenism should be competing unregulated. I believe that the divide between men and women exists precisely to ensure fairness in competition (as far as this is ever possible), and I think that if you respect that division, then a policy that addresses hyperandrogenism must exist. I think CAS made a ludicrous decision, and I think it is damaging to women’s sport. Saying that men and women are different is a biological reality, and in sport, the difference has obvious performance implications. It does not mean “inferior”, but different, so spare me any “patriarchy” nonsense on this (I’ve heard it said, for instance, that women’s performances are slower because of the “**** patriarchy”. If you think that, let me save you time and tell you to stop reading now, and save us both the aggravation).

I wish that it did not affect individuals like Semenya, but it does. It also affects many, many other women who frankly, have no chance of competing against the right athlete with an advantage that challenges the male-female division. And let me be very clear – this is not the same as tall people dominating in basketball, or people with fast-twitch fibres dominating sprints. We do not compete in categories of height, because we have decided that there is no need to “protect” short people. We certainly do not compete in categories of muscle biochemistry or neurology.

There are many aspects and arguments in this debate, and I respect most of them, but this particular offering of “whataboutery” is garbage, utterly inadmissible in this complex debate. If you want to play whataboutery in this way, think about weight classes in boxing, contact sports, rowing. Would it be fair if someone said “I can’t help my physiology, and I’m 2kg over the limit for “lightweight”, so let me in?” Or, if you did create a division for height in basketball, should we allow people who can’t help that they’re tall because of genes to come down and play with those under 6 foot? Of course not.

Point is, if you create a division to ensure performance equality based on a known performance advantage, then you absolutely must defend that division, however ‘arbitrary’ the line appears to be. The division between men and women is clear. It is obviously significantly influenced by testosterone, and few physiological variables are as clearly (if imperfectly) separate like testosterone is. If that division is to be respected, as it should, then hyperandrogenic women should have some regulation in place.

For that reason, I believe that the IAAF policy around an upper limit was the best solution, for now. It’s not perfect, and anyone who claims it’s simply about testosterone is wrong. But it’s a better place to be than where the sport is, and that’s my opinion. I cannot acknowledge the women’s 800m as a credible event as a result, but I hope that Semenya (and a few others) go out and run 1:52, and I wish she would run and win the 400m too. Sometimes people need to be struck between the eyes to see the obvious.

The actual interview with Denise Lewis, Colin Jackson, Paula Radcliffe and others after the event was quite interesting, they essentially said that the “average” female athlete competing would have a testosterone level of around three (not sure what units), Caster when tested actually is off there scale which went up to 10. Radcliffe stated that this level equated to giving her an advantage of around 3 -3.5 seconds over that distance, which is huge.

Very difficult subject, you have to feel sorry for Caster, the way she was victimised when it first came out was horrific. But on the flip side, it must be hard for fellow athletes knowing that how ever hard they train, they are probably competing for silver medal.

, it must be hard for fellow athletes knowing that how ever hard they train, they are probably competing for silver medal.

It is tough. Most male sprinters have felt that way over the last couple of Olympic cycles.

Here I think the ethical choice overrides the need for ‘equality’. An arbitrary testosterone limit requires the mistreatment of Semanya and probably quite a few other elite female athletes, either through unnecessary and unethical drug treatment, or by ejection from competition. And the result would probably be that a female with an androgen level which is still high compared with the general population, but marginally under the arbitrary ceiling, would win – so still not a ‘level playing field’, whatever that is.

Once you start making distinctions between two types of human being there are going to be anomalies.

For caucasians the difference between men and women is fairly sharply defined. In other parts of the world it can be less so.

it must be hard for fellow athletes knowing that how ever hard they train, they are probably competing for silver medal.

it’s hard for me knowing I’ll never be an olympic competitor 😕

Started reading mrblobby’s article and I’m having difficulty seeing the author’s point that this isn’t like tall people being good at basketball and those with lots of fast twitch muscle being good sprinters. Maybe I will by the end of it (assuming I get that far) dunno. I know we do divide sexes, in most competition and a lot of the difference is due to testosterone, so this is kind of blurring of the line a bit, so yeah tricky subject but CAS have already ruled against the limit.

For me it’s quite simple, if you have testicles whether external or internal you should not be competing in female events.

To win gold “average” won’t help you, you get sixth place and whinge.
If an athlete has natural occurring chemicals or hormones that boost their performance then they got lucky, if an athlete take these to boost their performance then it’s doping.

It seems that if it is a natural form of doping from unusually high hormone levels then it’s fine then why should they just allow doping for all athletes and at least then you could have a level playing field be it natural or artificial gained? It would then come down to technique and training as to who wins.

That’s a very good piece by Ross Tucker. It’ really comes down to the decision of whether you sacrifice the rights of the minority or the majority.
Another point is that Caster Semenya has the option to lower her testosterone levels to within a normal range, the other athletes do not have an option to increase their levels to the same as hers. Caster has if you like a little motor in seat tube which she could turn off but at this moment isn’t required too.
I wouldn’t want to force anyone to take medication though, I’d say to her if you want to compete without suppressants then you can and the world can witness just how good you are and how undoubtedly hard you have trained and worked with this but your time, though it will be recorded, will not qualify for any record and your finishing position won’t determine the medals.

so yeah tricky subject but CAS have already ruled against the limit.

Quoting the article…

That CAS ruled this way because they felt that there was insufficient evidence for the performance benefits is one of the stupidest, most bemusing legal/scientific decisions ever made.

As for…

I’m having difficulty seeing the author’s point that this isn’t like tall people being good at basketball and fast twitch muscle being good sprinters.

I think the point he’s making is that those are the rules. We’ve decided to have different categories for men and women. Just like we’ve decided to have different weight categories in boxing and rowing. We’ve decided not to have different categories for muscle type in running, or height in basketball.

It’s this bit from the article…

Point is, if you create a division to ensure performance equality based on a known performance advantage, then you absolutely must defend that division, however ‘arbitrary’ the line appears to be.

We know that males have a significant performance advantage over females, and one of the key components to that is testosterone levels.

Think something else that’s touched upon in the article is the difference between gender and sex, gender being social and sex being biological. This confuses things significantly for the general public.

I think Lynsey Sharp wasn’t complaining about Caster per se but the IAAF leaving a vacuum.
There was an interesting debate on 5live on the run up to the race it also mentioned the number of runners with the same condition that race. For some reason seems to have a high proportion of intersex competitors going back to the 30s randon googled article[/url].
Anyway the debate came down how do you cover in the rules the natural physiological advantage some people have, the example was Bolt due to his stride length is a brilliant 100m runner or with something like testosterone that is a also a banned substance.

Anyway the debate came down how do you cover in the rules the natural physiological advantage some people have, the example was Bolt due to his stride length is a brilliant 100m runner or with something like testosterone that is a also a banned substance.

I don’t think it does. We choose to have distinct categories for male and female to account for the biological advantages that male competitors have.. We don’t for stride length. Maybe we should have a short leg 100m and a long leg 100m 🙂

IAAF leaving a vacuum.

Indeed. The IAAF did try and find a solution but were overruled by CAS.

I have read that article, and a few other too and to say this issue in complex and emotionally tough understates it. The question is quite simple, you’re basically asking “what is a woman?”, the answer is somewhat more complex.

One way is testosterone level, Caster has around 5 times more testosterone than the average female, a level not far off the average male. Testosterone, as many know, can be used to gain a performance advantage, see Floyd Landis for example. So, female athletes, Linsey in this case, are suggesting that she has an unfair advantage over the field. The counter argument is that she physiologically speaking, she is female, she’s not boosted her testosterone artificially, she is merely competing the way she was made.

I read somewhere that if you look at sex as a linear, not binary measurement then she is somewhat further along then line than the average female athlete, but is certainly not all the way to male.

So, what do you do? No idea. My gut instinct is that a upper limit of testosterone is a good thing but I can completely get why many would not see that as fair.

Caster has if you like a little motor in seat tube which she could turn off

It’s not. It’s a perfectly natural physiological variation, not an artifically-introduced aid. Turning it off requires long-term drug treatment, which I’m sure is not without side-effects.

Caster has been treated dreadfully – for me the ethical impact of forcing women to take medication to compete far outweighs the disappointments of a handful of elite athletes. It is how you treat the minorities in your society and sport that is a true guide to fairness.

/me Considers making a comment – thinks better of it…

Rachel

It’s a perfectly natural physiological variation, not an artifically-introduced aid.

Agree. Just like male/female is a natural physiological variation that we choose to categories. I guess the point is that this variation gives such a large advantage in competition against women who don’t have it, should she still be allowed to compete in that category?

Considers making a comment – thinks better of it…

I’m sure it would be a very interesting perspective Rachel.

Especially if you really do have all the gear.

Agree. Just like male/female is a natural physiological variation that we choose to categories. I guess the point is that this variation gives such a large advantage in competition against women who don’t have it, should she still be allowed to compete in that category?

I think the difference is that it is an identifiable and measureable (and reversible) difference. I disagree with the author in your piece that other massive physiological differences in athletes are irrelevant, it’s just that either the origins of most of them are not fully understood, or they cannot be reversed.

Or at least, their reversal is so obviously ethically dubious that we would never consider it. Which brings us back to the suggestion that androgen suppression is a benign intervention. It’s not. It will undoubtedly have wider knock-on effects outside just muscle mass.

Just because you can tinker with an athlete’s androgen levels doesn’t mean you should.

Semenya (unfortunate name) has no womb, no ovaries but does have internal testes.

Do I feel sorry for her? Yes.

Is it fair that she be allowed to race women? No.

<possibly controversial comment>

It’s all just running up and down for shiny medals, why does everyone act like it’s something important?

</possibly controversial comment>

In the grand scheme, no, although it helps people understand the world around them a bit better in some cases.

Perhaps black male athletes should race in a separate event to white male athletes in the 100m for instance , they obviously have an advantage if you look at the results.

One of the major problems is that this needs to be considered dispassionately without reference to individuals but given that fundamentally it is related to Semenya (as she is the athlete that has ended up as the figurehead) that is difficult to do. It feels like a lose lose situation.

It relates to the fundamental issue of why we separate women’s sport. One of the debates on this said that the top women’s times for the 800m were outside the fastest couple of ‘000 times recorded over the distance in a year (the slowest runner in the men’s heats was still over 1s faster than the women’s GM). That goes well outside covering world class male runners. The IAAFs position is that is primarily due to the difference of higher levels of testosterone that they are exposed to in their development (as top male and female athletes all put in the same training effort), although CAS have ruled against it. If you accept that you need to support women’s sport by having separate races then you need to define a woman. Using physical attributes leads to the snide remarks Semenya got when she 1st won, using chemical/hormone levels in the body can lead to people feeling like they’re having their gender questioned, self certification could lead to abuse.

The one clear thing is that the IAAF need to get a handle on this soon to preserve the reputation and dignity of their athletes. And until that happens other athletes need to wind their necks in in public.

Semenya (unfortunate name) has no womb, no ovaries but does have internal testes.

I’m tempted to ask “says who?” but I don’t honestly think its any of our business. She (quite publicly) had to take a sex test, isn’t that enough?

Seeking better understanding and possibly augmenting rules from that understanding is good, changing the rules to exclude 1 person who is “too good” doesn’t look good. Make it appear less witch-hunty and it’ll probably fair better.

Negative doping or making her run in a different, presumably absolutely tiny category, does not sound like a good move to me.

Don’t know how many of you have seen the post 800m women’s race interview with Brit Linsey Sharp, but she seemed rather upset at the officials for letting Caster Semenya compete.

shoving a microphone at some-one who’s just completed an Olympic event, and expecting them to give nuanced and definitive answers to such a complex and delicate subject was pretty harsh.

I think a lot of people, athletes or otherwise, struggle to give a nuanced and definitive answer to lots of questions, it’s not just the heat of the moment. However, athletes should learn to keep their traps shut on stuff that is likely to embarrass them later (see also Aussie, German and French cyclists)

They used to test for a Y chromosome, which on the face of it seems logical to me. But they stopped in 1982 or something according to Wikipedia. I don’t know why.

Clearly the three podium winners at the 800 m were born on a different scale to most other women. Having a Y chromosome and gonads isn’t on a level playing field to women without these. So it’s not surprising that people would want to find a way of excluding these women from the “female” category that they compete in. We categorise a lot of other things in sport, particularly when you look at disability sport. Some people are sadly losers when it comes to the categorisation (e.g. Scottish disabled swimmer banned from Rio[/url]).

Whether you categorise based on chromosomes or testosterone, I think the outcome is fair.

Whether you categorise based on chromosomes or testosterone, I think the outcome is fair.

On who?

On who?

Not on anybody. Just ‘fair’.

Worth keeping in mind, even if you limited her testosterone production from now on via reverse doping, she will still have the bone structure and (most of) musculature from the years of elevated testosterone.

Here is a question, if she was in combat sports where the implications of doping can have life changing effects (by getting knocked out) on opponents rather than just pushing them down the placings, would we still be OK with this?

If I had a daughter who wanted to do MMA (which I would be fine with), and she was booked to fight a Semenya type, I’m not sure I would consider that a fair fight.

If I had a daughter who wanted to do MMA (which I would be fine with), and she was booked to fight a Semenya type, I’m not sure I would consider that a fair fight.

But then what if you had a daughter like Semenya who’d devoted her life to the sport only to be told that she couldn’t compete because the chemistry of her body didn’t fall into what we’ve determined to be sufficiently female so as to not give a significant advantage over other females.

It’s a horrendous situation to have to try and sort out. IAAF did try, but then CAS ruled against them. So looks like they’ve stepped away from it.

If everyone have to read that before they comment then this thread of mine will die a silent death.
I’m interested in STWers gut instinct and replies.

So let’s just add more uninformed noise to the internet, instead of doing a little background reading? I have read a few articles about this and it is an incredibly difficult problem to resolve. “Gut instinct” is worth nothing in this case, and is a disservice to the athletes involved.

Under current rules Semenya is eligible to compete as a woman, and I agree that the previous rule forcing her to medicate her natural testosterone level seems unfair and unethical. If we decide to change the definition of female for competitive purposes, that’s a different issue, and good luck coming up with something that is fair to all involved. Would you end up with multiple competitive classes for each athletic event, based on your testosterone range, like boxing weight classes, or Paralympic disability classifications?

There has been special treatment in men’s cycling for biological outliers, where riders with naturally high haemocrit levels were allowed to compete, even though they breached the levels set to catch dopers.

I think Semenya has shown a lot of grit and grace under pressure, in the face of some shoddy treatment. Coe’s comments and timing were partularly poor.

A little background reading? ? Have you seen the length of that article !?
I agree with the rest of your response though.

BillOddie – Member

Worth keeping in mind, even if you limited her testosterone production from now on via reverse doping, she will still have the bone structure and (most of) musculature from the years of elevated testosterone.

Here is a question, if she was in combat sports where the implications of doping can have life changing effects (by getting knocked out) on opponents rather than just pushing them down the placings, would we still be OK with this?

If I had a daughter who wanted to do MMA (which I would be fine with), and she was booked to fight a Semenya type, I’m not sure I would consider that a fair fight.

Well a similar issue has actually come up in MMA with Fallon Fox. A post operative transexual man (born a man, now a woman), who fights in womens MMA.

Well a similar issue has actually come up in MMA with Fallon Fox. A post operative transexual man (born a man, now a woman), who fights in wom

I think bring someone who is transexual into a debate about Caster is a bit dangerous. They are very, very different conditions and not in any way related to each other.