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World Track and Field Bans Transgender Athletes From Women’s Events
The sport’s international governing body, World Athletics, will exclude athletes who’ve undergone male puberty from female categories
World Athletics announced that it would bar any athlete who had gone through male puberty from female competition categories.
By Louise Radnofsky and Rachel Bachman, WSJ
March 23, 2023 4:03 pm ET
Track and field’s international governing body will enact a ban on transgender female athletes competing in women’s events, becoming the most prominent sports federation yet to significantly tighten its eligibility criteria for elite competitors.
World Athletics announced Thursday that it would bar any athlete who had gone through male puberty from female competition categories. The ban came as the federation also unveiled new restrictions for female competitors with differences in sex developments that will apply across all running distances and throwing events.
“The World Athletics Council has today taken the decisive action to protect the female category in our sport, and to do so by restricting the participation of transgender and DSD athletes,” said the federation’s president Sebastian Coe.
World Athletics said it based its limits on transgender female athletes around male puberty, rather than testosterone levels, after “it became apparent that there was little support within the sport” for using testosterone levels as a marker.
A World Athletics spokeswoman, asked how many athletes would be affected by the stricter policy, replied that there are no transgender athletes competing internationally.
Track is following swimming in determining that male puberty provides an unacceptable competitive advantage that undermines the rationale behind creating female event categories. The swimming federation announced its bar on athletes who had gone through the very earliest stages of male puberty last year, not long after a furor over the participation of a transgender woman, Lia Thomas, in female events at the NCAA championships.
Sports governing bodies have been wrangling for months over the conditions of transgender athletes’ participation in the wake of a November 2021 International Olympic Committee statement that effectively kicked the decision to them. The IOC indicated at the time that the physical attributes required for success across all of the sports in the Games varied too much for there to be a viable blanket policy.
Other large federations for sports such as cycling and rowing have also imposed stricter rules on transgender girls and women who want to compete in female events at the elite level, while stopping short of a full ban for athletes who have gone through male puberty.
Both cycling and rowing will potentially allow transgender female competitors into the women’s categories only if they can demonstrate testosterone serum concentration levels below 2.5 nanomole per liter for at least 24 months before their participation. Most women have a testosterone serum concentration below 2.5 nanomole per liter.
Both cycling and rowing had previously allowed higher levels of testosterone serum concentration, measured over a period of 12 months.
Separately on Thursday, World Athletics also issued stricter eligibility criteria for female athletes with differences in sex development, the term for people born with atypical sex chromosomes or ambiguous genitalia. Track and swimming are among a handful of federations that have also sought to address differences in sex development.
In track, the move follows years of fighting over athletes such as Caster Semenya, a South African runner with a DSD who won two Olympic gold medals in the 800 meters. The track body subsequently sought to require competitors in women’s mid-distance races to suppress their blood testosterone levels below 5 nanomole per liter.
Semenya has confirmed that she has a difference in sex development of the 46 XY variety, meaning that she has female features and male chromosomes. Infants born without DSDs have two X chromosomes as females and XY chromosomes as males.
The new World Athletics policy on DSD athletes is stricter because it now applies to all events, and requires athletes with differences in sex development to suppress their testosterone serum concentration levels below 2.5 nanomole per liter.
Swimming’s policy uses the same testosterone threshold. In addition, the policy applied by the swimming governing body now known as World Aquatics requires all athletes to certify their chromosomal sex in order to participate in any elite events. That policy requirement could potentially identify more female athletes with differences in sex development.
Plenty of sports bodies are struggling to develop their policies on transgender participation—with no clear target date for completing their reviews.
Badminton, basketball, gymnastics, hockey and soccer are among the federations that have acknowledged a review is under way but have given no indication of when it will be finished.
Write to Louise Radnofsky at louise.radnofsky@wsj.com and Rachel Bachman at Rachel.Bachman@wsj.com
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