Advantage surpasses rules
These days I visit the blood lab every couple of months to give a sample so the doctor can keep an eye on my health. Without fail when the phlebotomist sees the size of the veins onmy arm they say ‘‘I can’t miss that!’’ And I don’t think anyone ever has. Gettingmy blood is like shooting fish in barrel.
As a teenager I used to paddle kayaks. Not in sprints like Lisa Carrington, but in ultra-marathons, up to 100 miles long.
Much blood had to flow through those arms as I grew and my blood vessels grew large as a result. I haven’t paddled kayaks formany years and my arm muscles look like those of a cyclist, but those big arm veins I developed as a teen have endured.
It’s a salient illustration of a permanent adaptation to my body resulting from the ‘‘stress’’ of exercise duringmy developmental years. Bones, although less obvious, are another example, and are sensitive to exercise during adolescence.
Studies of young tennis players, both boys and girls, show the bones of the arm holding the racket become thicker and denser. Other studies show exercise affects the shape of bones; with weight-bearing exercise during puberty producing larger muscle attachment points compared to being sedentary.
It’s during those developmental years when mechanical stress on the skeleton provided by physical activity helps to ensure a person’s bones become strong into adulthood. And that then delays osteoporosis in the autumn years.
Thus, exercise during the teenage developmental years has an impact on the skeleton that persist though adult life. And it differs between boys and girls. Provided it’s not excessive, participation in a sport through your developmental years will generally provide a physical advantage as an adult in that same sport because of the permanent adaptations that occur; skeleton, blood vessels, and other bits.
Gender-based development is mainly because of differences in testosterone and oestrogen during puberty. The most obvious effect during the teenage years is the way the bones grow; males growing longer limb bones and women a wider pelvis. It’s not simply due to having more or less of one of these hormones but a delicate balance between these two.
This means a grown man has a skeleton, that when accompanied by muscle, moves in a slightly differentway than a grownwoman, providing an advantage for men in many things physical. This is partly why men run, jump, and throw further and faster than women. Add thismale advantage in physical pursuits to the effect of sport during puberty, and you have amale adult with an advantage in that sport; an advantage that will never go away even when testosterone declines.
There is currentlymuch debate as to the fairness of transgender women competing with biological women in sport. We have a good chance to be the first country to have a transgenderweightlifter win an Olympic medal.
Women in the same sport, and countries that will compete against our transgender athlete, are calling it unfair despite our lifter ticking the necessary Olympic gender-change boxes to allow her to compete. But she has the right, like you and I, to participate in sport. However, a couple of things need to be considered
For spectators and participants alike, starting the competition with an equal opportunity to win is important. That’s why, for example, we have weight divisions in weightlifting. Yet amale who has participated in a sport during their teenage years later competes in that same sport as a transgender femalewill have retainedmany of the advantages they had as amale. Their skeleton for starters. That’s not equal opportunity.
Secondly, a requirement to compete is that a transgender womenmust possess testosterone levels below a certain threshold; lower than levels naturally occurring in most men and some women. Yet the long-term effects of artificially manipulating testosterone and oestrogen, especially during adolescence, are unknown and have the potential to lead to bone and/or other health issues.
Doping in sport is frowned upon because of the health risks of taking performance-enhancing drugs, because it prevents equality of opportunity for winning, and because it provides a bad example to the public. Yet we currently have transgender athletes taking possibly harmful drugs to be able to compete, and then by competing undermine equality of opportunity for others. This smacks of incredible hypocrisy.
What’s the answer? It seems obvious that athletes who have previously competed in a sport as a male should not be able to then compete in that same sport as a female. Secondly, until the long-term health effects of testosterone suppression are known, that criteria for competition should be removed or relaxed.
The solution then, for the time being at least, is to provide category-based opportunity for transgender athletes wanting to compete. After all, we do that in all sorts of sports already, for both fullyable and athleteswith disabilities.
And from the sidelines, why wouldn’t we find that just as interesting and exciting as current sport? Maybe more so, because the journey these people have experienced to get to their personal pinnacle may be something to admire.
Steve Stannard is a former Massey University academic and Palmerston North business owner.