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tonyPick [soylentnews.org] writes:

Ross Tucker over at The Science Of Sport has an interesting piece on the debate over Olympic athlete Caster Semenya [sportsscientists.com], who has become a central figure in the issues of gender testing in women's sport, and the likelihood of continuing controversy at the Rio 2016 Olympics:

There is no more certain gold medal in the Rio Olympics than Semenya. She could trip and fall, anywhere in the first lap, lose 20m, and still win the race. There is also no more certain a controversy at the Rio Olympic Games than Caster Semenya. Her story began in 2009, with the sex-verification controversy of Berlin, and then it progressed over six years during which she was subject to a new rule that governed intersex athletes by limiting their testosterone levels.

CAS overturned that rule last year, when an Indian sprinter called Dutee Chand took her case to them. The result is that all intersex women no longer have a limit on testosterone. Semenya is certainly not the only one – rumours of other runners exist, though none were so shamefully “outed” as Semenya in 2009. However, she is proof of the benefit of testosterone to intersex athletes – having had the restriction removed, she is now about 6 seconds faster than she’d been over the last two years.

And the way that she is running those times suggests much more to come.

(The CAS referenced is the Court of Arbitration for Sports [wikipedia.org])

This article links to an earlier posting with more detail [sportsscientists.com] as well as some additional publications on the history and science of sex verification in athletics[PDF] [humankinetics.com].

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