Athletics around the world introduces mandatory tests for those participating in female competitions to argue that it is necessary to protect women’s sports.
This is the latest move overseen by Sebastian Coe as president of the Governing Body, two years after banning men on women’s events, to address gender eligibility issues.
Coe Lord said that following the World Athletics Conference, non-invasive cheek swab tests and dry blood tests must be employed or performed once on athletes.
“I feel this is a truly important way to provide confidence and maintain an absolute focus on competitive integrity,” he said.
This test attempts to see if someone has transitioned to a woman after experiencing male adolescence, or if there is a difference in sexual development that provides the benefits of testosterone.
Test providers are currently being sought.
Coe Lord said athletics around the world could employ non-invasive cheek swab tests or dry blood tests. File Photo: Reuters
Coe Lord said:
“The process is frankly very simple, very clear, very important, and you work on the timeline.
“Neither of these are invasive. They are necessary and are done for absolute health care standards.”
Coe Lord believes that testing prevents unfair performance benefits
Sebastian Coe’s mission, in his view, protects the integrity of women’s sport.
Competitors with differences in sexual development will also be banned from women’s events supervised by athletics around the world, and competitors with differences in sexual development will also be banned from competing with women at birth.
Cora believes he is trying to prevent the unfair performance advantages gained by those who have experienced male adolescents.
And his solution to verify eligibility is sex testing – part of the Olympics of the last century.
He claims that new swab tests in all female athletes do not invade, and checks whether there is the presence of the SRY gene, normally found on the Y chromosome.
But Arun Williams of the Manchester Metropolitan University Sports Institute, is part of a group of global academics expressing concern that the initial genetic testing could lead to clinical testing of the body.
However, the new tests are geared up in time for the World Athletics Championships held in Tokyo in September, and could be a requirement for all female competitors.
Will the test be adopted by other sports that have already banned transgender women from women’s events?
And ultimately, under pressure from Donald Trump, are they spreading to 2028 LA Olympics?
Advances the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, following President Donald Trump, he is calling on sports to ban trans women from women’s events while saying there are only two genders, male and female.
The International Olympic Committee previously called for a return to sexual testing for “bad ideas,” but IOC President Kirsty Coventry has not ruled it out.
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Sky asks new IOC boss about Trump’s transathlete policy
“This is a conversation that happened, and the League of Nations took a much bigger lead in this conversation,” she told Sky News after last week’s election.
“What I was proposing is to bring the group together with the United Nations and really understand that each sport is slightly different.
“In equestrians, sex isn’t really an issue, but in other sports it does.
“So, once again, I want to do it, sit together with international federations and think about the collective pathway for all of us to move.”
Read more: New IOC Presidents Need to Address Trump, Putin, Transgender Issues
Last year, Reem Alsalem, the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, called on the IOC to reintroduce sexual testing to protect female athletes from injuries amid concerns about eligibility.
The IOC introduced the “Certificate of Femininity” in the 1968 Mexican Games. However, these chromosome-based tests were considered unscientific and unethical and dropped before Sydney in 2000.
