Excerpts from report by Matt Lawton, Chief Sports Correspondent, and Rick Broadbent, Sports Writer, The Times of London, published Thursday, Jan 26, 2023, 6.40pm GMT:
World Athletics set to move towards a new open category in which trans and intersex competitors take on elite men in track and field
World Athletics’ long-term strategy is likely to stop trans and [XY] intersex athletes competing in female categories — and instead lead to them taking on elite men in a new “open” classification.
The sport’s governing body caused widespread alarm by circulating a consultation document that included the option of allowing transgender athletes [and 46, XY DSD athletes like Caster Semenya, Dutee Chand, Francine Niyonsaba and Christine Mboma] to compete in elite female track and field events if they recorded a low testosterone level.
Women athletes and campaigners reacted angrily, citing the physical advantages associated with going through male puberty.
However, insiders anticipate the end result of the consultation will be the creation of a new, fully-inclusive open category in which both trans and [most XY] DSD (differences in sexual development) athletes will compete against elite men.
The “preferred option” presented by World Athletics in the consultation paper is for the testosterone level [for XY athletes competing in women's events whose gonadal testosterone comes from testes] to be halved to 2.5 nanomoles per litre with the time limit extended to two years. This would apply to all events.
If those rule changes are approved by the council and then implemented by World Athletics before the new season, it would essentially rule [XY] DSD and trans athletes [currently eligible for women's events under certain restrictions] out of [women's events] at both the World Championships in Budapest this summer and next year’s Paris Olympic Games.
However, this could merely be a stepping stone to the creation of a new category. World Athletics expects further research to be conducted that could be used at the Court of Arbitration for Sport to allow it to follow Fina, world swimming’s governing body, in excluding [male] trans athletes [and female trans athletes who take exogenous testosterone] from the female category [along with XY athletes who have the particular DSDs subject to the WA restrictions in force since 2019]
