Track's proposed eligibility, transgender rules would completely ban Semenya and others
Track and field moved toward adopting rules that would place athletes assigned female at birth but have higher testosterone levels, like Caster Semenya, under the same set of rules as transgender athletes who were born male and transitioned to female.
World Athletics, which in 2023 banned transgender athletes who had transitioned male to female and gone through male puberty, announced recommendations Monday that would apply strict transgender rules to people like Semenya, who was born female but has what the organization describes as naturally occurring testosterone levels in the typical male range.
Previously, athletes like Semenya with differences in sex development (DSD) had to undergo testosterone-suppression therapy for two years to be eligible. Now they may be ineligible regardless of whether they've done hormone therapy.
The new rules would also eliminate exceptions into the female category for any transgender athlete who hasn't gone through male puberty. No such athletes currently compete at the highest elite levels of track.
The recommendations propose reinstating a version of chromosome testing that was discontinued in the 1990s, requiring athletes who compete in the female category to submit to a cheek swab or dry blood-spot test for the presence of a gene that indicates whether the athlete has a “Y” chromosome present in males.
In 2023, World Athletics president Sebastian Coe said new DSD regulations could impact up to 13 current high-level runners; that number is believed to be even smaller now. It includes Semenya, a two-time Olympic champion at 800 meters who has taken the argument to the highest court in sports and the European Court of Human Rights.
How the new guidelines might impact Semenya’s protests is unknown. The ECHR has ruled Semenya was discriminated against by track’s rules, but that did not impact a ruling from the Court of Arbitration for Sport that upheld those regulations.
In a nod to the fact that the rules could knock Semenya and others completely out of elite track, the recommendations proposed “the adoption of measures to address any reasonable reliance interests DSD athletes may have as a result of new restrictions.” One possibility would be adding a mixed-gender category to some athletics events.
World Athletics says its proposed changes reflect the "latest developments in science, sport and law.”
Among the new developments it cites is evidence that “makes clear that an exclusive focus on male puberty is wrong." It cites evidence that children born male have an “already an athletically significant performance gap before the onset of puberty,” and that “athletic disadvantages associated with female body structure and physiology contribute to the performance gap.”
The governing body has opened a “consultation period” on the recommended rule changes through March 5. The next council meeting, at which the rules could be adopted, is set for the end of March, likely after the new president of the International Olympic Committee — a spot for which Coe is running — is selected.
Coe, the Olympic champion middle-distance runner, has been vocal about “protecting the female category" in track and field. More recently, he has said the IOC needs to take a leadership role in the transgender debate instead of letting each individual sport decide their own regulations.
“Preserving the integrity of competition in the Female Category is a fundamental principle of the sport of Athletics and we look forward to this collaborative consultation process with our key stakeholders in this area," Coe said in a statement accompanying the announcement of the proposed changes.
The new guidelines issued by Coe's current organization, which are geared toward elite and not grassroots sports, come out only days after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order barring transgender athletes from competing in girls sports in the U.S. and pressured the Olympics to do the same.
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