Niyonsaba takes down Gidey and Obiri, crushes a 9:00.75 TwoMile

BOPA wrote:

Can we stop this nonsense! She shouldn’t be penalized for the way she was born. It’s not like she ran 8:20, hell, she didn’t even break the world record. For that matter, nether did Semenya.

Did anyone bother to round up retired legends or exhume the bodies of previous dominant athletes like FloJo and check their genetics? I say let her race. At least the T is natural—likely that many on the elite level are doping anyway, including Americans (see Shelby)

LOL, FloJo made her name in track during the 1980s, when sex chromosome testing was mandatory for all athletes seeking eligibility to compete in elite-level women's sports governed by the IAAF and IOC. FloJo might have doped, but it's a certainty that she had XX sex chromosomes and lacked an SRY gene - otherwise no women's IAAF events or Olympics for her. FloJo also gave birth to a child, so it's a sure bet she had all the standard female reproductive organs and capabilities.

During the approximately 30-35-year period from the mid-1960s through the mid/late-1990s when sex chromosome testing was required to be eligible for women's elite international events, the vast majority of female competitors asked (84%) were happy with the policy and thought it should continue. The only athletes who complained and mounted legal challenges to rules meant to keep female sports for female people back then and ever since have been XY athletes like Niyonsaba. It was solely to placate XY DSD athletes that the IAAF and IOC decided to discontinue mandatory sex chromosome testing - XX athletes were not consulted.

Had they been consulted, I suspect an even higher percentage than 84% would have said mandatory sex chromosome testing should continue if they'd gotten a glimpse into the future and could see what's been happening since Semenya won Semenya's first women's World Championship in 2009. But back in the 80s and 90s, no one foresaw that ending mandatory sex chromosome testing would eventually lead to a flood of XY DSD athletes in the 21st century horning in on, and dominating in, women's sports. That's because in the 80s and 90s, when girls and women were first starting to get a fair chance in sports, everybody knew about sex differences, sex discrimination and sexism - and could not imagine that in just a couple of decades there'd be an entirely new Zeitgeist which says that biology doesn't matter any more, only "gender identity" does, and that female athletes should put their own ambitions and dreams aside so that males with genital abnormalities can make their mark in women's sports.

I also suspect that if you were to contact retired women's sports legends, and the families of the deceased ones, from the era when sex chromosome testing was required, they'd gladly share the sports documents showing that the women had undergone the buccal swab sex chromosome testing required by the IAAF and IOC and that they were/are XX - and depending on when they were tested, without an SRY gene too.

If you asked former women's World Cup alpine ski champion Erik Schinegger - who was found to be XY on the eve of the 1966 Winter Olympics, where Schinegger was a shoe-in to win the gold in all the alpine women's events - I bet he'd say that barring Niyonsaba from women's sports wouldn't amount to Niyonsaba being "penalized for the way she was born." Used to be athletes in women's sports who were found to be XY like Schinegger were quietly withdrawn from women's competition, and after licking their wounds, so to speak, they managed to pick up the pieces and get on with their lives. Just as most of us do when we face setbacks, defeats and heartbreaking losses that might feel crushing at the time they occur.

middleD wrote:

What concerns me, as a female runner whose training/performance has always fluctuated based on my menstrual cycle, etc., is that these athletes are seemingly not experiencing these same training effects because they do not have a menstrual cycle, womb, ovaries...

Adjusting T levels is not a satisfactory leveling of the playing field here, and it still super sucks for women with "women things" to be competing against women without.

It's as if the IAAF does not understand internal female anatomy, or they just really don't care about women.

That's probably the most tangible point I've heard: women lose some blood every month.

Some woman suffer greatly for one week each month.

It's definitely an advantage not to suffer like that.

Amazing I haven't read anybody express it until now.

Likewise, it's a disadvantage in life to appear female and not being able to reproduce without medical intervention.

Of course women of all types experience that problem.

I think there is enough discrimination against people that do not match society's ideal.

Athletics just seems to be an extension of that.

Athletics seems to be discrimination on steroids.

It seems a way of expressing eugenics publicly.

That's the big picture I take away from it all: discrimination.

I understand the idea of fair competition.

But I also think that idea is used as a tool to manipulate discrimination.

The Olympic Games were not born in Africa.

They were created by Europeans.

And of course we know got the Romans and the Greeks had their ideals of beauty.

It's certainly was not based on African females.

But it should have included them if it was to be accurate.

Because there is beauty in every person.

signal hill wrote:

The only way this will be sorted is if the athletes refuse to race them. Apart from allowing women to inject testosterone up to their levels there is no way any woman can compete against intersex people. Women’s sport is going to die if this is allowed to continue.

Interesting you say that.

It reminds me of something I read today.

There was a bus full of people, all of them white except for one who was black.

The driver told the black person they needed to get off the bus.

But the black person refused.

So the driver instructed all the way people that he was going to drive the bus back to the station, so are they please all help him out and going back to the station with him to get the black person off the bus.

And the white people all complied.

dullard wrote:

Fogrunr wrote:

Strong spirit Francine!

Quite some testicular fortitude.

More fortitude then it takes to be an anonymous snipe on an anonymous message board.

Absolutely no fortitude in that.

Most incoherent post in letsrun history.

middleD wrote:

What concerns me, as a female runner whose training/performance has always fluctuated based on my menstrual cycle, etc., is that these athletes are seemingly not experiencing these same training effects because they do not have a menstrual cycle, womb, ovaries...

Adjusting T levels is not a satisfactory leveling of the playing field here, and it still super sucks for women with "women things" to be competing against women without.

It's as if the IAAF does not understand internal female anatomy, or they just really don't care about women.

EXTREMELY well said. The IAAF doesn't understand the anatomy AND they don't care about women. They care more about appeasing the SJW's screeching loud enough to make your ears bleed.

It's even more than you mentioned. The DSD women will have bigger frames, stronger bones and more muscle. Add in the lack of menstrual cycles and the advantages they have over XX women are overwhelming.

Absolutely agree with both comments. It’s a joke that they are allowed to compete against women and people are debating whether Nike shoes gives an unfair advantage.

Gidey is not wearing the latest Nike spikes at both the Olympic and the 2 mile event.

Oh lord, you misunderstood middleD's comment, and illustrated her point in the process.

She said said that her training and performance was affected by her menstrual cycle, as is the case for many girls and women. The menstrual cycle is a nearly month-long process (usually 28 days) when girls and women deal with a host of issues due to the impact of our constantly changing hormones, which fluctuate throughout the entire cycle. Girls' and women's fluctuating hormones over the course of the entire menstrual cycle have a huge impact on our ability to train and to perform at our best because they affect energy levels, sleep patterns, speed, weight, connective tissues, muscles, joints, mucous membranes, response time, appetite, metabolic rate, sensitivity to allergens and foods, gastro-intestinal activity, susceptibility to injury and illness, mood, ability to concentrate, mental sharpness, general sense of wellbeing and so on.

But you immediately misinterpreted middleD's post to make it seem as though she was referring solely to the one week in the nearly month-long menstrual cycle when the menstrual period occurs. Then to make matters worse, you mansplained menstrual periods by reductively describing them as a process whereby women simply "lose some blood every month" and some "suffer greatly" as a result.

Yes, many girls and women suffer greatly during our menstrual periods. Sometimes the suffering is related to how much blood we lose, which can cause temporary problems like light-headedness and chronic conditions like anemia. But the suffering that many girls and women experience when menstruating is more often related to the excruciating uterine cramping we experience whilst (and often prior to) our periods. This cramping occurs because during the menstrual period, the uterus doesn't just bleed - the uterus sheds and sloughs off the tissue lining it that has built up in the weeks prior to get ready for a possible pregnancy, and then expels that tissue through the cervix. For many girls and women, sloughing off and expelling the uterine tissue involves intense uterine contractions and pulsing - so intense that the cramps are similar to the labor pains of childbirth (as they were in my case). The menstrual period also causes a great deal of inflammation, both in and around the uterus, and for many girls and women throughout the body. For girls and women with endometriosis, which affects at least one out of ten, these problems are compounded...

But what happens during the menstrual period is only a small part of the issues that girls and women contend with during the entirety of the month-long menstrual cycle which have a huge impact on our training and performance - and which XY DSD athletes with testes and no female anatomy or physiology whatsoever will ever have to contend with.

For example, many girls and women experience sharp stabbing pains due to ovulation mid-cycle. Many of us have a tendency to get migraines or other kinds of severe, blinding headaches at various points in our menstrual cycles. Same goes for sinusitus, joint pain, chest congestion, "hot flashes," constipation, diarrhea, severe insomnia and so on. At certain times in the menstrual cycle, girls and women are especially prone to joint and connective tissue injuries, and to shin splints and blisters as well.

Then there's the bloating/water weight gain that many girls and women experience in the run-up to our periods. In addition to causing many of us to go up a clothing size or two, this kind of bloating can cause abdominal tenderness and breast tenderness that reduces our ability not just to perform well, but to train. Some girls' and women's breasts get so sore that even the slight movement of the breasts caused by each step taken when we are simply walking is extremely painful. Which means running becomes pure hell. And such breast tenderness can last the whole week before one's period starts.

As for the rest of your comments: hogwash. Those of us who object to male DSD athletes in women's sports aren't motivated by a racist impulse to unfairly discriminate against these athletes because they are "African females" who "do not match society's ideal" standards of beauty created by Europeans using white European women as the template. We object because these athletes are male.

Speaking of racism and discrimination towards "African females" in particular, you might be interested to know that many women in Africa, and women of African heritage who live elsewhere in the world, think it's incredibly racist and sexist to suggest that male DSD athletes from Africa typify the way African girls and women look, are built and perform in athletics. For years now, Caster Semenya's supporters have claimed that Semenya is an exemplar of a "strong black African woman" who represents the way hundreds of millions of black women in Africa look, sound, sit, gesture and comport themselves generally. But hundreds of millions of black women in and from Africa will tell you that is BS, and they find it incredibly insulting. This clip of Semenya being interviewed by a black African woman illustrates why:

OozmaKappa wrote:

"But theyre not breaking the world record and neither did semenya so they clearly have no unfair advantage 🤡"

Can I just say I appreciate your constant clown references

I am a genetically XY athlete who ran world class women's times in the 400 and 800 in college. Those times weren't even good enough to get me into the conference finals in a good D3 conference. I would welcome seeing the genetically XY DSD athletes compete in the men's events just like I did.

middleD wrote:

What concerns me, as a female runner whose training/performance has always fluctuated based on my menstrual cycle, etc., is that these athletes are seemingly not experiencing these same training effects because they do not have a menstrual cycle, womb, ovaries...

Adjusting T levels is not a satisfactory leveling of the playing field here, and it still super sucks for women with "women things" to be competing against women without.

It's as if the IAAF does not understand internal female anatomy, or they just really don't care about women.

Yeah, this isn't really an issue. An entirely level playing field, even among only cis-gendered women, is impossible to create. And it isn't a desirable goal.

Ancient Marathoner wrote:

Clown show? Nothing so benign. The Semenya races were like watching officially sanctioned rape. Niyonsaba vs. Gidey isn't quite as repulsive, but still disgusting.

The above post as well as this one should be deleted. Please!

That was a lot more dominant than I realized. A YouTuber named Maurice James has posted full videos of all the Prefontaine races from Friday night. Niyonsaba didn't look winded at all and in fact it reminded me of how Semenya didn't appear to be fully giving her all.

That type of result would have caused a big stir in Tokyo. It's publicly more obscure here but imagine Sebastian Coe's new headaches at both end of the distance spectrum, given Mboma and Niyonsaba.

BTW, Niyonsaba may soon have some company. Margaret Wambui struggled with the decision to shift focus to sprints or distance races. She hasn't competed in more than two years. But recently she announced plans to seriously attempt the 5000. Wambui is the youngest of the three who were forced to give up the 800. She is only 26.

The ridiculous thing is that there should even be a debate about this. It's obvious to the naked eye.

There has never been a woman running 1:55 800m and 30:40 or what in the 10k, we explicitly KNOW they have T levels way beyond xx-women and at least for some cases we know about the precise medical condition, so there should not be any question that they cannot compete with women in any event. Full stop.

It's tough luck, but rather some slight injustice to a few than a huge injustice to 1000s of women. Clear rules would also stop what can be suspected that coaches are purposefully searching for DSD individuals.

im happy a naturally high testosterone runner beat an obvious doper like gidey

20yearsrunning wrote:

im happy a naturally high testosterone runner beat an obvious doper like gidey

just 11 hours til niyonsaba tries a 3000, smashes her country's NR and may win v some of the best 3k/5k athletes

So you use an argument from the segregation era to make an entirely unrelated point. Very telling. You liken intersex athletes competing in women's sport with uppity blacks refusing to get off a whites-only bus in the old South. Ugh. Your argument just failed.

20yearsrunning wrote:

im happy a naturally high testosterone runner with testes beat an obvious doper like gidey

Fixed.