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<\/div>The athletics stadium at\u00a0the Paris Olympics last\u00a0month<\/p>\n
dpa picture alliance\/Alamy<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n
Tested<\/a><\/strong><\/em> The Olympics are over. But I am still thinking about the displays of strength, skill, teamwork \u2013 and joy. Decathlete Markus Rooth skipping as he realised he had won his 100 metre heat. The women of Italy\u2019s gold medal-winning fencing team huddled to celebrate each other. Gymnast Jordan Chiles almost crying at the conclusion of her dazzling floor routine while her proud father thumped his chest in the stands.<\/p>\n I am also thinking about athletes who weren\u2019t in Paris, such as Namibian sprinter Christine Mboma, who won silver in the 200 metres at the Tokyo Olympics at 18. She loves to run \u2013 it is where she can forget the hardest parts of her life: \u201cI don\u2019t love it to become famous\u2026 It\u2019s in my blood.\u201d Then there is Kenya\u2019s Maximila Imali, a standout in the 400 and 800 metres for the past decade and, more recently, in the 100 and 200. She has held national records in the 100, 200 and 400, as well as the 4 x 200 metres relay.<\/p>\n The pair are at the centre of Tested<\/i>, a six-part podcast hosted by science journalist Rose Eveleth. It is about how sports have drawn the line between men and women \u2013 usually at women\u2019s expense. Eveleth spent nearly a decade researching the stories that became Tested<\/i> and it shows: each episode is carefully researched and backed<\/a> by many references.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Runners Christine Mboma (above) and Maximila Imali (below)<\/p>\n Mark Schiefelbein\/AP\/Alamy<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n Like others before them, both Imali\u2019s and Mboma\u2019s early successes made their womanhood suspect to some. Given blood tests and invasive physical exams (\u201cI went home crying,\u201d says Imali) at the behest of World Athletics, the body governing international track and field, they were faced with a career-defining choice.<\/p>\n Both see themselves as women, and always have. But World Athletics classes them as having differences in sex development, also known as intersex. This is any of several conditions characterised<\/a> by someone\u2019s sex chromosomes, balance of sex hormones, internal anatomy or external genitalia diverging from the expected.<\/p>\n Xinhua News Agency\/eyevine<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n Mboma and Imali have higher levels of testosterone than average for women without differences in sex development. They received an ultimatum: to run at elite level, they must lower this hormone to what World Athletics deems an acceptable level \u2013 a target above the average for most women, but below the lowest level typically seen in men.<\/p>\n Tested<\/i> follows their responses. Mboma chooses to suppress her testosterone, a difficult trial-and-error process for which she and her doctor receive little help, and one the World Medical Association considers unethical. She tries, and fails, to qualify for the Paris games.<\/p>\n As for Imali, at 28, every missed Olympics may be her last chance. Yet she decides not to lower her testosterone, but to fight via the international sports court for her right to compete. That verdict is unresolved at the podcast\u2019s end.<\/p>\n These are just two stories in the century-plus history of women in elite athletics, which moves from a brief, humiliating era of \u201cnude parades\u201d and genital inspections to decades of blood tests and \u201ccertificates of femininity\u201d. Today, the test for running is based on testosterone levels. But, as Tested<\/i> shows, there is so much we still don\u2019t know about this hormone.<\/p>\n Among the other questions the podcast asks are why is everyone who has been dubbed \u201ctoo masculine\u201d since 2009 a women of colour from a lower-income nation? How much does testosterone actually matter in performance? Why are sex hormones the basis of division at all when so many other factors drive success in sports \u2013 including other genetics and your country\u2019s prosperity? What is the point of these categories<\/a> we have made in the name of fairness?<\/p>\n Science alone can\u2019t answer. Nor will this series. But what Tested<\/i> does so well is context: history, science, contested data, politics and an invitation to think more deeply about things we take for granted. And we are also invited to wonder, with Eveleth: \u201cHow much suffering is worth allowing \u2013 and whose \u2013 in the name of categorising?\u201d<\/p>\n Topics:<\/p>\n<\/section><\/div>\n
Rose Eveleth<\/strong>
NPR and CBC<\/p>\n![\"(210803)](\"https:\/\/images.newscientist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/04100028\/SEI_217378572.jpg\")
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