World athletics to introduce compulsory sexual tests for women athletes

Athletics will introduce compulsory DNA sexual tests for athletes who enter female competitions, said its global leader, making it the first Olympic sport to add the requirement.

The move arrives in the midst of an increasingly irritated debate on the eligibility rules in women’s sports and arrives less than a year after the problem broke out at the Paris Olympics when questions about the qualifications of Two women who continued to guarantee gold medals In boxing he led to tumor scenes and sometimes disturbing inside and outside the ring.

The move is essential to protect female sports, said Lord Sebastian Coe in Great Britain, the head of the runway of the track, the world athletics and a former double Olympic gold medal. He said that the new policy, which will submit the competitors to what is described as a non -invasive cheek buffer or dried DNA test, was part of his vote to “stubbornly protect the female category and do everything you need to protect it”.

World Athletics said that the new tests could be put in place in time for his next world championships in Tokyo in September.

“We are not only talking about the integrity of women’s sport, but in reality we guarantee it,” Coe said to the journalists of Nanjing, China. “And this, we believe, is a really important way to provide confidence and maintain absolute attention on the integrity of the competition”.

Coe, a candidate without success in the recent elections to guide the International Olympic Committee, was a polarization force on this issue. The debate on women’s admissibility criteria has brought to battles on those who have the right to compete. Since 2023 he has forbidden transgender athletes from the female competition.

The new rules eliminate from the female competition a minority of athletes who do not have the typical female XX sex chromosomes and have one of the different conditions that together are known as differences in the development of sex or in the DSD. These people can be feminine for external appearances and some do not know they have DSD. But their unusual genetic can cause high levels of testosterone and perhaps greater muscle development, giving them some athletic advantage that men have.

Athletics has been at the forefront of the debate since the South African runner Semenya exploded in the public consciousness by winning gold in the 800 meters at the World Championships in 2009. His victory pushed a repercussions From the rivals who complained of Semenya’s apparition, leading to the government body at the time he ordered sexual tests. In question it was a rare trait that gives her naturally high levels of testosterone.