Semenya protest brewing

fairplay wrote:

Have y'all read what Science of Sport has to say about this, including Semenya's leaked test results?

Semenya was dealt a tough hand at birth. But if we let her run, might as well eliminate a separate competition for women.

Why? Do you really think this is so common that it's going to be a huge issue, when it's never come up before? In all honesty her condition doesn't seem to give her any advantage over the typical testosterone-doping female.

J.R. wrote:

He is running in women's races.

Duh.

Everyone knows that he's running in women's races.

Thanks for avoiding answering the question you knew was being asked.

What specific information do you have that shows Semenya is a 'he'?

You don't like the way she looks? The way she runs? What are you privy to that the rest of us aren't?

'You don't like the way she looks? The way she runs? What are you privy to that the rest of us aren't?'

The test results stating she is 100% female?

If the results came back with this they would have surely been published

ukathleticscoach wrote:

The test results stating she is 100% female?

If the results came back with this they would have surely been published

Surely you wouldn't think your personal medical records should be published, do you?

Do you really believe all female athletes are "100% female"? What does "100% female" even mean? How do you determine what percentage to claim? Would "75% female" still be acceptable to you? What about "60% female"?

Are you privy to the IAAF conducted medical tests which lead them to conclude she can compete in the female category?

If not, what is there that you know that they don't?

According to research I've seen, most girls that excel in sports have more "male" in them than others. Those girls who are aren't as "developed" as most and are winning gold medals in gymnastics got there because of hard work that went a lot further because their more guy-ish genes predisposed them to be better at sports. I don't think anyone is arguing that there's a lot of genetic luck involved in being good at sports, or at least having a higher potential, but this CS situation _appears_ to be a different scenario. This isn't just seeing which girl had better genes and also put in the time to develop endurance and speed; obviously, or she wouldn't have been off the track for 11 months. There's clearly some difference in her physiology and the process to evaluate it. Even without knowing the specifics of the tests they ran or what's actually going in her body, based on the actions the IAAF have already taken it's completely reasonably to wonder what's actually going on, and at least question her place in women's races.

If she is as much a girl as Jenny Highheels down the street and she's still running these kinds of times, that's awesome. It's amazing, and I'm willing to be most track fans, who follow the sport simply to watch people do amazing things, would like enjoying her races knowing that it's the real deal. They'd love to give her the recognition she, like all the other woman throwing down great performances, deserves, just like most people like watching Bolt do the unbelievable things he's doing. That's why the impetus is on her to prove her legitimacy if she wants the recognition, and if she wants the WRs she'll almost certainly set to be looked at in the same light as others. If that's not something she cares about, even if she is 100% legit, then it's completely OK with me if she never goes out of her way to prove it, but her accomplishments are going to have a foul taste to nearly all everyone involved with the sport forever. If she isn't "legit", whether by the current definition of what female is, or a more appropriate one that can handle a situation as unique as this, then it's really just a shame that the system is failing the other athletes. There's too much that's already happened, as unfortunate as that may be, for CS to get a free pass as far as perceived legitimacy goes.

If she's "normal", then you'd expect her to handle this situation just as any other normal girl would; if Kara were accused of being a guy, you think it'd take her 11 months to prove she's well within the definition of a female? I don't. There's something different about this situation, and even (read: especially) if it's not different enough to disqualify her from racing with the other girls, it should be explained what the difference is, I think.

When someone breaks a world record, they don't actually get the WR until they 'prove' they are not doping.

Do we see the dope test results? No, other than the 'yes' or 'no' (and even the 'yes' can take months to determine, even when they are performing tests they've done many times before, not breaking new ground with the recent gender tests).

The system is set up such that private matters (dope tests, gender tests, etc) are conducted by the authoritative body (WADA, IAAF, etc) who then announce the binary answer. No, this person did not test positive. Yes this person can compete with females.

Do they tell us runner A was just barely under the legal limit for some steroid, so therefore 'clean'? Do they tell us what "percentage" female someone is?

It's funny you specifically mention Bolt. Wasn't he running close to 20 flat as a 16 year old? Surely that is not due primarily to time being put in to develop speed and endurance, but rather an unfair genetic predisposition.

Test results are normally private, unless you are a pro cyclist....

the IAAF better do something quick. protests could Expand to the US and elsewhere and hurt revenues for Daguu 2011. the IAAF better clamp down on suspected hemaphrodites and dopers like Semeya, Solinski, Rupp, Ritzenhein, Wheating, etc. IAAF is already in bad shape financially.

could Expand wrote:

the IAAF better do something quick. protests could Expand to the US and elsewhere and hurt revenues for Daguu 2011.

What protests are you talking about that "could expand"?

So far all we see is a handful of athletes mouthing off in the media. No one is canceling a race; no one is staging a sit-in on the track; no one is picketing a meet.

When it comes to revenues, more people would pay to see CS run than would stay away because they think she is male.

could Expand wrote:

the IAAF better do something quick. protests could Expand to the US and elsewhere and hurt revenues for Daguu 2011. the IAAF better clamp down on suspected hemaphrodites and dopers like Semeya, Solinski, Rupp, Ritzenhein, Wheating, etc. IAAF is already in bad shape financially.

I'm not sure if you were trying to be funny there. With better deliver I might have chuckled, but that was just dreadful.

I'm suspicious that the reason that Semenya was allowed to compete is because the IAAF doesn't have the money to pay up on the lawsuit she would inevitably bring. Even if she borderline failed whatever testing they did, there is no way they could afford the shitstorm that would come from it, so they let her back into the athlete ranks to cover their asses.

The 51% was used to convey that the IAAF considers her "more female" than male. The IAAF is simply following their own policies and trying to protect her human rights (to cover their asses against legal action). The leak last year was she has/had internal testes and complete/partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. If she had them removed and is getting hormonal treatment-- that's it? Poof, the "advantage" is no longer present? It seems like she's a science experiment of 1 (or maybe a handful of athletes, ever, although did any of them try to compete after medical intervention?). The IAAF is just following policy, when the reality is she could still have a physical advantage.

I'm not saying that the IAAF or whoever's running these tests needs to make the results public. In the case that Person X breaks a world record and there's no general assumption that they're doping, it's fine (from a perception standpoint) that the results of the test proving it's legitimacy are not made public; there's no sense of doubt. In this case the general public has a huge sense of doubt, so even if CS passes all the tests when breaking record, if she wants to be recognized (and not fall into a Regina Jacobs situation, where your names on a list somewhere but it's meaningless) she needs to go out of her way to legitimize the results. If all she cares about is knowing herself she's a girl, and breaking records is just a personal thing and she doesn't need recognition that's fine, but it also needs to be fine that people refuse to recognize her accomplishments.

Comparing this situation to Lance Armstrong: there's huge public doubt about his whole career. He's gone out of his way many times to show how he's clean. I'm not saying that makes him clean or that he is clean, but it at least provides someone trying to make an objective decision some data. If he operated under the same cloud of mystery as CS, there are very few people that would give him the benefit of the doubt. The fact that these two people have been accused of something, and there's some amount of evidence supporting it (even just being the best in the world), puts them in a position where they need to play defense or have their whole life doubted.

As far as Bolt goes, genetic predisposition alone can't make a race unfair. There would be no point; you'd always look for the person who has the best genes, say they have an unfair advantage and take them out. That would repeat until you're left with one person who got stuck with the overly chlorinated gene pool and can't run a 10 minute mile if their life depended on it. Athletes makes the decision that they're ok with some people having better genetic predispositions than them. To some degree we all know that track is "how fast can I get myself to go, and how does that stack up against everyone else", under the pretense that you may never be as fast as this other person. I don't think any athletes make the decision that they're trying to see how fast they can go, and also see how that stacks up against someone in CS's alleged situation. Tyson Gay has never assumed that Bolt is part man part cheetah; he's just a really fast guy. And that's ok, maybe Gay will never be as fast as Bolt, and that's the answer to the question we all ask when we step out on the track. It's not fair that CS _has_ been assumed to have an *abnormal* genetic advantage, and the best explanation her opponents are getting is "well, we weren't sure for 11 months, but now it's fine. Nothing to see here. We're all fine here, now. How are you?" If something changed in her body, explain it, if it was fine to begin with, explain that. If the explanation is she's just a fast girl in the same way that Bolt is a fast guy than that's fantastic for the reasons I explained in my last post. If the explanation is different, and we're in uncharted territory, it should be up to the community as a whole to evaluate the facts and determine the best way to handle the situation, not just some probably 5 person group who's trying to cover themselves legally and according to rules that weren't designed to handle this.

'Surely you wouldn't think your personal medical records should be published, do you?'

Wouldn't bother me. I do get hayfever though - big deal

Do you really believe all female athletes are "100% female"? What does 100% female mean"

I will rephrase - within the normal range. You can normally see and clearly test the difference between a man and a woman

Now I've got a question for you do you not think it strange that it took 11 months to complete the tests?

doggpound wrote:

she was cleared to run everyone should just leave her alone and accept that she is just way better than them

I disagree she was cleared by the IAAF who was only worried about the PC backlash not the real world advantage that she may have. I think that her all of her medical gender test should be made public and what ever decision the IAAF made as far as mitigating her advantage. It is really not fair to have it kept in secret and those women she competes against deserve to know exactly what they are running against.

some crazy runner guy wrote:

I disagree she was cleared by the IAAF who was only worried about the PC backlash not the real world advantage that she may have.

Based on what information, what do you know that others don't?

this is simple. The reason men and women compete in different races, is that males have a competitive advantage due to testosterone. Semenya has internal testes which produce testosterone. "She" can reproduce as a male (if they take "her" sperm and artificially inseminate a female). She has three times the testosterone as a female, so the reason men and women compete separately has been violated.

Why don't we rename the divisions. Instead of male and female divisions, why not testosterone above a certain X/ml of blood division and a below a certain X/ml of blood division.

What about if you had an STD? A history of drug abuse? Were taking psychiatric meds? Still wouldn't bother you? Would you at least understand why others wouldn't be so keen on having such knowledge public?

What is "within the normal range"? Pretty much by definition, those who are amongst the top 10 in the world in any physical activity are far beyond the "normal range". Are any of the Olympic female shot putters "within the normal range"? What about a medal winning sprinter? If they were "within the normal range", they wouldn't be beating out millions of others to qualify for the Olympics.

What tests did they run? How long should those tests take to run? How long does it take to assemble a panel of experts to decide which tests need to be run? How long does it take those experts to evaluate the results of those tests? How long does it take to run those results by other experts for their opinion?

What answers to those questions do you have that indicate 11 months is too long a time? Would you prefer if they rushed things an didn't take a full and thorough look, just so people like you can be satisfied things were done in a length of time suitable to you?

'What about if you had an STD? A history of drug abuse? Were taking psychiatric meds? Still wouldn't bother you?'

Yes, it would and just like Caster I would not want the results published because I would have something to hide

Did you never consider that it’s a borderline case? It would be difficult to prove in court one way or the other and because Caster has massive legal backing the IAAF has backed down.

11 month is too long. With enough $ you could run all those tests in a matter of weeks

You mentioned people like me well are you like those people who think Gatlin was innocent- twice! ie Gullible

I find it funnier that its a bunch of male former athletes complaining about a questionable female running a race.