Protecting the Integrity of Fair competition in Womens Sport

[El Guapo]

Except this girl is a girl in every sense of the word beyond elevated testosterone levels produced through a natural physiological freak of nature.

Its not as if she arrived and started battering everyone. She was beaten 9 times.

Yes she is a girl but by virtue of the fact that she has internal testes and has a body composition similar to that of a male she could be categorised as being unfairly advantaged when the entire premise of the female category is to provide a level playing pitch for females

If your standard for classification for her being a female is whether she has a penis or a vagina she is a female and passes that classification test.

If you standard is observed sex at birth as written into official documents she passes.

If it is XX chromasomes she fails

If it it testosterone levels within the normal typical range she fails.

Very likely if you performed muscle biopsy or tested power, bone density, grip strength she will fail typical standards for a female.

If you include all those things you may conclude she no longer qualifies to compete as a female.

I honestly think her sporting performance is irrelevant. Losing 9 times or 100 times or going unbeaten, its a question of fairness and the rules by which people are categorised for fair competition.

 

[dukeroyale]

I think i understand the point Matlock was making. but she can correct me if i am wrong.
I think it was Peopleluas saying that Khalif shoud have stepped aside knowing she had an advantage.

I would say that from Khalifs perspective she was perfectly within her rights because she is a female to fight as a female so why would she ever step aside?

The rules of this competition stated that sex as written in the athletes passport would qualify them for the competition. Not a successful presentation of a chromosomal test or anything else.

i know of no sportsperson who would give up any advantage they have in any elite sport that's just not how sport works. We may have notions that people should be sporting but we those notions are misguided at best in elite sport.

Michel Phelps is about as far from a average as you can get. Long arm, narrow hips, big feet etc. He has an advantage and is exceptional but he is within his category.

Equating the advantages Phelps has misses the point i think. 100% of the athletes we see have some visible or invisible characteristics which makes them great and the rest of us seem like a different species of also rans.
But critically we don't protect other categories just the female one.

This matters because we can celebrate both Michael Phelps and say Katie Ledeky in equal measure with no second guessing or prevarication for the exceptional sports people they are.

One could of course protect other categories if so inclined. I guarantee that the world short arse basketball champs or whatever wouldn't be much of a spectacle in comparison to the NBA.

That's what happens if you fail to protect the female category you get to see Athletically average or slightly above average men instead of exceptional women.

it’s funny you should bring up basketball because it was nothing but lanky fuckers dominating that for ages and shutting out the short arses. the aba/nba though it was a shit spectacle and interest was through the floor so they wondered how they could adjust the game and be more inclusive.

in came the three point line!

similarly, the spectacle of the italian wan getting battered was drove everyone to this stage. if it had gone the distance and khalif had won on a unanimous decision then this thread doesn’t happen. but it happened and now everyone is having the talk about sport being very, very mildly less inclusive.

as you said in another post, how many tests or criteria do you make a person go through before they qualify? she passed this time around. perhaps it’ll be a different set of rules from now on in.

 

[CaptainSensible]

Many female boxers have beaten her though.

She was cleared to box in the Olympic. I assume she (like most other athletes at that level) has given years of her life to training for this moment. To expect her to bow out is ridiculous imo.

Paul O Donovan probably has a genetic advantage as a rower. Phelps did as a swimmer. I am sure there are loads of other examples. Would you expect all of those people to step aside too?

This is an argument I don't agree with at all and is made quite often to defend DSD athletes competing against women (I'm not saying that is your point of view as you have expressed reservations).

When you look at Phelps or any other athlete with a seemingly in built advantage they tend to be specific to a particular sport that are more often than not, not transferable to other sports.

Lets suppose he grew up in Ireland, his first love might have been GAA or soccer etc and as we don't really have a swimming tradition or the requisite training facilities there is a good chance Phelps would have grown up playing another sport, in which case his body shape would have worked against him and he would probably have looked like a clumsy oaf falling over his big feet on the pitch. In a way it is a bit of "there by the grace of god" he chose swimming.

Guapo made the point the extra testosterone levels give a 12% advantage in athletics type sports and a 35% advantage in strength based sports, therefore, whatever sport a DSD athlete chooses as a kid they will have an inbuilt advantage.

So in my opinion that goes against the argument of the attributes a freakish athlete may possess over others in a particular sport, because the same athlete would probably be inferior against the same opposition in other sports as his freakish attributes work against him whereas the DVD athlete would/should dominate in practically all sports.

 

[El Guapo]

whereas the DVD athlete would/should dominate in practically all sports.

I don't entirely agree with this bit. Its no accident that the concentration of DSD athletes in athletics occurred at the 800m. It is the event that perfectly encapsulates a hybrid of power and speed. The pure 800m athlete is rare as hen's teeth. But i have no doubt those athletes are the real studs of Track and Field.

You don’t have the raw speed of the 400m or below and your body shape tends be ill suited to the high milage aerobic engines of the middle distances and longer.

The DSD athletes brought a level of power and speed endurance that was atypical for women so they dominated there but they would have barely made a dent in mens competition. Semenya's PB is 1:54 mid. Thats a good schoolboys time.

The hard truth of this is that they are good but not exceptional athletes when measured in the category that fits their bodies phenotype.

WA banned them from distances above 400m and below 1500m first while gathering data. They all attempted to run 200m and 5000m and uniformly were mid pack at best

Semenya ran 9:11 for a 3k up in city sports for 8th place. 3000m is not a power event so the advantage was diminished. But she still held an advantage.

Again due to what i consider to be an unfair advantage they get contacts, opportunity and sponsorship which means some actually exceptional woman won't.

 

[Matlock]

This is an argument I don't agree with at all and is made quite often to defend DSD athletes competing against women (I'm not saying that is your point of view as you have expressed reservations).

When you look at Phelps or any other athlete with a seemingly in built advantage they tend to be specific to a particular sport that are more often than not, not transferable to other sports.

Lets suppose he grew up in Ireland, his first love might have been GAA or soccer etc and as we don't really have a swimming tradition or the requisite training facilities there is a good chance Phelps would have grown up playing another sport, in which case his body shape would have worked against him and he would probably have looked like a clumsy oaf falling over his big feet on the pitch. In a way it is a bit of "there by the grace of god" he chose swimming.

Guapo made the point the extra testosterone levels give a 12% advantage in athletics type sports and a 35% advantage in strength based sports, therefore, whatever sport a DSD athlete chooses as a kid they will have an inbuilt advantage.

So in my opinion that goes against the argument of the attributes a freakish athlete may possess over others in a particular sport, because the same athlete would probably be inferior against the same opposition in other sports as his freakish attributes work against him whereas the DVD athlete would/should dominate in practically all sports.

I was making the argument simply from the point of view of expecting her to step aside even though she was cleared to compete, because she has an advantage.

We don't expect that of any other athlete, so it seems unfair to expect it of her.

 

[Cloudy O'Ranieri]

I was making the argument simply from the point of view of expecting her to step aside even though she was cleared to compete, because she has an advantage.

We don't expect that of any other athlete, so it seems unfair to expect it of her.

I dunno, I'm sure Serena looked at her muscle mass in the mirror once or twice and thought "yeah, it's not fair on the others, I should stop".

 

[El Guapo]

After the show: what happened next to Olympic gender row boxers?

Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting won historic gold medals in Paris, but the future of both fighters remain in doubt

www.theguardian.com

 

[El Guapo]

In Fairness to Seb Coe he has followed through on his promises.

World Athletics plans cheek-swab tests for elite athletes in female category

Governing body of track and field said new research shows male advantage exists before puberty and recommends ‘pre-clearance’ testing for female category

www.theguardian.com

 

[The Shakey Fridge]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1888934126230605841

 

[Instabroke]

The IBA..... enough said.