Caster Semenya, the South African two‑time Olympic 800m champion, said on Sunday that the reinstatement by the International Olympic Committee of sex verification tests for the 2028 Los Angeles Games was “a disrespect for women”.
The hyperandrogenic former athlete also expressed disappointment that the measure was taken under the leadership of the new IOC president, Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe.
“For me, personally, for her being a woman coming from Africa, knowing how African women or women in the global south are affected by that, of course, it causes harm,” Semenya said during a Cape Town press conference on the sidelines of a sporting competition.
On Thursday the IOC reinstated genetic testing to determine female sex, starting with the 2028 Olympics, in effect banning transgender athletes and a large number of intersex athletes from women’s sports.
The IOC used chromosomal sex testing between 1968 and the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, before abandoning it in 1999 under pressure from the scientific community, which questioned its effectiveness, and from its own athletes’ commission.
“It came as a failure. And that’s why it was dropped,” Semenya said in Cape Town.
The devil is in the details. Much like with drug testing, its not easy and there are always people trying to beat the testing system.
The solution is not “what the athlete/country says”. They are testing for sex, not gender.
But you also can’t let the test be too simplistic, otherwise some people might be unfairly excluded.
But given the complexity of the biology and medical testing in general, it is unreasonable to expect that no-one will be unfairly excluded, or unfairly included.
The question is, do you want to bias it to let people though unfairly, or exclude people unfairly?
Ultimately they need to do what is most fair to most compeditors and credible for the sport.