IAAF rules on intersex athletes

Career over.

That blonde British woman will be over the moon.

SA will not like this one bit.

This will sort out who was intersex pretty quickly

There were articles on this topic in the UK press this morning. I t does seem as if this is the approach the IAAF has decided to take. But in at least one of the articles it was stated that there can be long term health issues for the individual if testosterone levels are lowered artificially. One would have thought the IAAF would have been aware of this and taken it into consideration when coming up with this policy. The suggestion in some quarters is that this approach is very much a broad brush affair, not really very well thought out.

There are a whole mess of medical, ethical, legal issues raised by this topic and I very much doubt that this IAAF policy will be the last word on the subject - or anything like it!

Yes some tinpot nation winning medals this way will challenge this.

Absolutely crazy this. The IAAF should have sorted this out ages ago - what's wrong with setting them up as a separate category and have them run - on a level playing field - as part of the special olympics?

Ridiculous conflating the social question of these people's place in society with their place in sex based physical sports.

Will those who've missed out on medals be compensated?

This is absolutely the right ruling, and must feel great for Melissa Bishop, aka the fourth place finisher but first actual female across the line in the Rio 800m finals.

Caster Wambui wrote:

Apparently the IAAF has decide that high testosterone 'females' aren't allowed to compete in the 400m - mile events. either change events or quit.

https://mg.co.za/article/2018-04-25-iaaf-wants-semenya-to-lower-her-testosterone-levels-or-quit-says-report

I wonder why they will be allowed to compete in longer events.

Caster Wambui wrote:

Apparently the IAAF has decide that high testosterone 'females' aren't allowed to compete in the 400m - mile events. either change events or quit.

https://mg.co.za/article/2018-04-25-iaaf-wants-semenya-to-lower-her-testosterone-levels-or-quit-says-report

Stupid rules. It is high time to get rid of sex categories period and just have open competition with A heat, B heat etc etc

Solutions Provider wrote:

Absolutely crazy this. The IAAF should have sorted this out ages ago - what's wrong with setting them up as a separate category and have them run - on a level playing field - as part of the special olympics?

Ridiculous conflating the social question of these people's place in society with their place in sex based physical sports.

Will those who've missed out on medals be compensated?

You should head over to Ross Tucker's site for the long history and issues with sex determination.

Using T levels is highly problematic.

On one hand, I can see the IAAF's point about a "level" playing field. But on the other hand, it's not as if she's cheating by being allegedly intersex. It just seems like this will never have a definitive answer and we'll have talked about her lady junk more than we've talked about anyone else's lady junk.

Karl Hungus wrote:

On one hand, I can see the IAAF's point about a "level" playing field. But on the other hand, it's not as if she's cheating by being allegedly intersex. It just seems like this will never have a definitive answer and we'll have talked about her lady junk more than we've talked about anyone else's lady junk.

Just want to point out that she isn't "allegedly" intersex, she is ntersex.

The article says that this decisions "sidesteps" the CAS ruling. Can anyone explain that further? I thought that CAS required IAAF to submit additional evidence, and that CAS would evaluate that. Is that process complete? If not, on what basis has IAAF avoided CAS approval here?

Karl Hungus wrote:

On one hand, I can see the IAAF's point about a "level" playing field. But on the other hand, it's not as if she's cheating by being allegedly intersex. It just seems like this will never have a definitive answer and we'll have talked about her lady junk more than we've talked about anyone else's lady junk.

Testicles are not lady junk. When people talk about her testicles they are talking about her man junk.

I posted this in another thread but so what, it needs to be said:

This is fine and acceptable as long as they are able to figure out the exact amount of testosterone the elite-level female athlete has who is not androgenous.

Then, they would have to titrate the substances in carefully in order to maintain that level.

Any less than that and they are cheating Semenya.

If no titration or monitoring policies are in place, then they should not rule in favor of this until they have an "A" standard for the testosterone levels of most female athletes. In other words, they would have to delve into major statistical analysis to be correct--it's not that simple.

Scientifically speaking, they would have to get a mean, median and, probably, more importantly, a mode for the female athlete. The mean will tell them what the trend is overall. The median will determine a direct midpoint for the levels, and the mode will let them know what most of the female athletes are doing. You would then need a control group of non-athletic females to see what their levels are.

Why?

You would need to test both of them in a workout situation to find out the maximum (or near maximum) they could reach in a situation that amplifies their testosterone levels (since they can switch situationally). You would then need to find the standard deviation because you would have to know the full extent of the ranges of possibility.

Only then could you create a baseline by which all female athletes (androgenous or true XX) should be at in order to state what is proper for an athlete like Caster Semenya.

Sadly enough, unless all of these are in place and the full opinions and adjudication are conducted in a fully clinical manner without bias, any ruling seems premature since the scope of androgenous levels may not be completely evaluated and understood.

tl;dr version: No, this is not good as it's not a fair rendering.

Mike

Bishop might finally win wrote:

SA will not like this one bit.

I wish I could find the post from a few years back about South Africa’s national team being a parade of freaks.

There should be a LR hall of fame.

If they are now defining sex by testosterone levels, does that mean that someone with a Y chromosome and male genitalia can run as a female if they have testosterone levels below the threshold?

Can anyone explain how this is any different than the situation a few years ago, where Semenya and presumably Niyonsabo and Wambui, were required to take anti-androgens to compete, and CAS overruled it? What has changed? It seems like CAS will just overrule it again.

Nick Willis's browsing history wrote:

Career over.

That blonde British woman will be over the moon.

She's a straight up hater, that one. Her and Elish's mum.