I respect Tim Noakes - but, he's wrong on this one

Agreed

I'm going to add one more thought - the reason why world class running captures my imagination (and many others I would guess) is that these are uniquely gifted and determined individuals doing extraordinary things. But, there is nothing that special about a guy (or someone with male hormones) running 1:55. Allowing individuals to compete with women who are hormonally equivalent to men is a violation of that expectation that this sport is about witnessing something special.

Perhaps the author of the piece quoting him is to blame, but if Mr. Noakes main reason for her to compete is that

"She is not running as fast as men nor is she running as fast as some other women. If she was running 1:41, then we would have a problem"

then he is not quite as bright as the brojos make him out to be. Terrible reasoning. I don't care if she was only running 2:10; if she's not a female, she can't race with them. It may not be that clear cut in reality, but much like we don't let Oscar Pistorius compete because he is only 95% human (5% machine? hah), we cannot let Caster compete unless 'she' is 100% female.

I don't understand why he is so angry that his perceived goal of the officials of the sport is to "keep the Olympics free of unwanted complications"... that is a good thing.

I took notice that a respected scientist would have that opinion, but then I noticed he was also from South Africa. I wonder if Dr Noakes would have the same opinion if the athlete in question was from France or something. I doubt it.

What's most risible here is Letsrun's contention that "if anyone has an educated, unbiased grip on the Caster Semenya story it's Tim Noakes." I'm sure Dr Noakes opinion is educated but to suggest that a South African doctor has the most "unbiased grip" on the situation is beyond belief.

I agree with your logic and agree that the issue is not whether non-females might run 1:41. The problem is in the determination of what constitutes "non-female." Many of us would agree that the available "gestalt" evidence suggests that Semenya has significant male attributes and could be considered "non-female." But when it gets down to it, what criteria do you use to make the determination? There are women with high testosterone levels. Do you prevent them from competing if they fall an arbitrary number of standard deviations from the mean? Clearly it cannot be based on external genitalia or genetics alone. One would think that there would be a combination of factors including hormone profiles and anatomy, but it seems that experts have already met to try to establish such criteria and were not able to do so. So many things that we think are discrete exist on a continuum.

That being said, I think that experts can and should come up with consensus criteria for a dividing line between "more male" and "more female." Then it would be interesting to see how many of the top performing women are actually physiologically in the borderzone.

@Neb & Concur: I completely agree. I'm shocked by this sort of flawed logic from a scientist. Why do we have a problem when s/he runs 1:41 but not, for example, when she runs 1:47? Obviously CM's speed plays a role in why his/her not-quite peers in the World Championships bridled and complained bitterly after his/her win--she trounced everybody--but what really bothered them was the manifest unfairness of women having to run against a differently-abled (to use hyper-PC-speak) intersex athlete in an event whose rulebook is supposed to exclude intersex athletes.

Dear Caster, please stop submerging your intersex glory within the testosterone-deprived precincts of women's athletics! Be ALL that you can be! Viva intersex! No more hiding in the shadows! Demand your OWN division, one in which intersex athletes compete with their peers rather than cherrypicking trophies from estro-letes!

The story read like it was excerpts from longer statements or a longer interview. It just seemed like some context for his remarks was lacking.

Anyway, can't say I support him on this but it is a tricky situation because there is not some sort of dividing line. I think IAAF needs to make a ruling and soon.

and to say that the South African Tim Noakes is unbiased on Semenya is unwarranted. Of course, he wants South Africans to succeed, and there is a very clear hormonal advantage that intersex athletes have in female competitions. If s/he runs 1:47, there is no problem??? The world record is 1:53, by a doped to the gills 47 second 400m runner Jarmila Kratochvilova (my old grandmother was watching the World Championships with me in 1983 and she said, "that's not a woman. that's a man!") and Semenya was so dominant that it did not seem unlikely that s/he would smash that.

You people are talking about a "hormonal advantage" as if the markers between men and women were totally clear to begin with, as if gender and sexuality can be reduced to chemicals in the body, and as if the science of gender and the relationship between these chemicals and athletic performance has been settled.

Sure, Dr. Noakes' comments don't end the debate. But his logic is not faulty. It's just incomplete. But so is yours. So instead of acting like someone's an idiot because he's taken a side, why don't you just disagree reasonably?

That would be the logic course of action.

I have to admit I was quite surprised by the admiration expressed for Noakes and this quote of the day on the home page. Did the Brojos think this through at all? Not only is Noakes wrong, his comments barely even make any logical sense.

Pad Berson wrote:

I have to admit I was quite surprised by the admiration expressed for Noakes and this quote of the day on the home page. Did the Brojos think this through at all? Not only is Noakes wrong, his comments barely even make any logical sense.

So this is the kind of crap that is supposed to pass for "logical sense?" There's no argument here at all!!

He probably wants to see genetic doping come into the norm.

deleuze wrote:

You people are talking about a "hormonal advantage" as if the markers between men and women were totally clear to begin with, as if gender and sexuality can be reduced to chemicals in the body, and as if the science of gender and the relationship between these chemicals and athletic performance has been settled.

Sure, Dr. Noakes' comments don't end the debate. But his logic is not faulty. It's just incomplete. But so is yours. So instead of acting like someone's an idiot because he's taken a side, why don't you just disagree reasonably?

That would be the logic course of action.

This has been the only rational post on this thread so far.

deleuze wrote:

You people are talking about a "hormonal advantage" as if the markers between men and women were totally clear to begin with, as if gender and sexuality can be reduced to chemicals in the body, and as if the science of gender and the relationship between these chemicals and athletic performance has been settled.

Sure, Dr. Noakes' comments don't end the debate. But his logic is not faulty. It's just incomplete. But so is yours. So instead of acting like someone's an idiot because he's taken a side, why don't you just disagree reasonably?

That would be the logic course of action.

I'm not saying the markers are clear. But if we are going to continue having seperate races for men and women we need to define what "male" and "female" means as clearly as possible. If we can't do that then we should just have everybody in the same race.

Both Geb and Usain have a definite hormonal advantage on me. No question these two are producing more androgynous hormones than I am, and this plays into their dominance in the sport.

Hormone levels are not black and white so to speak. There is no defining level that makes one a male and makes one a female. Blood work alone cannot be used to define sex. If you were to take a large enough sample of men and women, the spectrum of hormone levels would be totally complete with no clear gaps... So what does this mean for the world of athletics? How do we differentiate between men and women in sport?

I believe what Noakes may be alluding to is the idea that we can ban an athlete due to their genetic advantage. A female who produces higher levels of androgynous hormones will have an advantage (as will a male in the same situation), but we don't ban them from the sport... How do we define the limits?

On another note, those who believe Noakes is simply biased, you must have no clue about this guys body of work. He is a scientist through and through.

What's outrageous is that there is no clear test in place, so Semenya is currently being subjected to months of testing, is unable to compete, and is the subject of vicious rumours. And all because spectators felt she looked like a man, so now we're trying to invent a new test that will bar her from competing.

anon wrote:

On another note, those who believe Noakes is simply biased, you must have no clue about this guys body of work. He is a scientist through and through.

His body of work suggests that he doesn't really care about the sport and that he's never successfully applied his load of theories to bring about significant performance gains.

WOW. I think the only way one can argue that Noakes is NOT an idiot is to argue that he is biased and advocating for Semenya. Although this is probably not what she wants to hear - that she can run as long as she doesn't win. Awful reasoning. Ignore him.