The IAAF are right — testosterone matters
There is no joy in yesterday’s decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. even by their own admission, there is not a whole lot of justice, either. Nobody can be greatly happy at the options now afforded Caster Semenya and others.
Yet is it right that testosterone levels should continue being a vital determining factor in women’s sport — reluctantly, yes. Are the IAAF then right to continue their stand for women’s sport? Yes to that, too.
ross Tucker is a sports scientist who was part of the team Semenya sent to represent her at CAS. he believes suppressing her level of naturally produced testosterone could reduce Semenya’s 800metres times by seven seconds. If this is true, at the 2016 Olympics, in which she was a gold medallist, she wouldn’t have got past the heats.
Tucker is deployed to make a case that depriving Semenya of her natural self is disproportionately unfair, punitive and harmful. Yet that cannot be played both ways. It cannot be that testosterone is not such a dominant factor in female athletic ability — which is also claimed in some quarters — and then that its reduction can turn the greatest middle- distance competitor in the world into a comparative fun runner.
So testosterone does matter. It is what has kicked in when the best boys begin to leave the best girls behind on sports day. At primary school, the sexes compete equally, no problem. Then testosterone does its thing and there is divergence, of strength, stamina, speed.
One of its effects concerns muscle mass. If a man and a woman go to the gym and train equally, the man’s testosterone level allows him to build muscle that is beyond the woman. That is why women’s sport needs protection.
A good teenage male club athlete would win an Olympic standard women’s event. Take Woodford Green and essex Ladies AC. It is well respected, although it hasn’t been in the top three in the British Athletics League since 2012. Yet the best times recorded by boys in their Under 17 age group would have won the women’s gold in the 2016 Olympics at 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m and 1500m. As an Under 17 running in 2015, Woodford’s Canaan Solomon — last year the 10th best 800m runner in Britain — would have beaten Semenya’s winning time in rio by 3.26 seconds. he’d be over eight seconds inside it now. That’s the importance of testosterone.
Semenya cannot compete with men, nor is her advantage, as some argue, the same as Michael Phelps’s disproportionately long arms or Usain Bolt’s stride. One is chemical, the other biomechanical. If Semenya simply had legs or lungs that aided athletic performance, this would not be an issue.
Chemistry is different. Paula radcliffe says that, without limitations, unscrupulous countries could begin seeking out young women with Semenya’s condition, and directing them into careers in sport. If this sounds farfetched, consider the state-sponsored doping programmes in russia, or what the Stasi files revealed about east Germany. Sporting success has often been used as an endorsement of a regime. It is far from unimaginable that women could be segregated in this way.
heightened testosterone does not make a great athlete. Semenya has been on testosterone reduction medicine before and won an Olympic gold. even now, she could compete in 5,000m events without suppressants because testosterone is not seen to carry such advantage at the longest distances.
This is puzzling, given that Semenya is in the male testosterone range — albeit at the low end — and, in rio, Mo Farah’s winning 5,000m time beat that of Vivian Cheruiyot of Kenya by more than a minute and 20 seconds.
Semenya issued a statement suggesting she could appeal and the legal and scientific arguments will continue. Sometimes we forget that at the heart of this are people who have done nothing wrong, other than to be born differently. Yet this is about the preservation of women’s competition. For if there is no advantage in testosterone, why aren’t athletes allowed to take it legally?