World Athletics on Tuesday said it had approved the introduction of a cheek swab test to determine if an athlete is biologically female.
The planned changes include 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.
Sebastian Coe, the president of the international track and field federation, said athletes would have to take the test just once during their career.
Photo: Reuters
“It’s important to do it because it maintains everything that we’ve been talking about, and particularly recently, about not just talking about the integrity of female women’s sport, but actually guaranteeing it,” Coe told a news conference after the World Athletics Council met over two days in Nanjing, China, following the World Athletics Indoor Championships.
“We feel this is a really important way of providing confidence and maintaining that absolute focus on the integrity of competition,” he added.
World Athletics has not set a date for the introduction of the test, but it is expected to be in place for the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo in September.
Coe, the two-time Olympic champion who was unsuccessful last week in his bid to become International Olympic Committee president, has been vocal about “protecting the female category” in track and field. He has said the International Olympic Committee needs to take a leadership role in the transgender debate instead of letting each individual sport decide it own regulations.
Asked whether World Athletics believed the policy would withstand legal challenges, Coe said he was confident after an exhaustive review, adding that “you accept the fact that that is the world we live in.”
“I would never have set off down this path in 2016-2017 to protect the female category in sport” without being “prepared to take the challenge head on,” Coe said. “We’ve been to the Court of Arbitration on our DSD [differences in sex development] regulations. They have been upheld, and they have again been upheld after appeal. So we will doggedly protect the female category, and we’ll do whatever is necessary to do it.”
College basketballer Kaitlyn Chen has become the first female player of Taiwanese descent to be drafted by a WNBA team, after the Golden State Valkyries selected her in the third and final round of the league’s draft on Monday. Chen, a point guard who played her first three seasons in college for Princeton University, transferred to the University of Connecticut (UConn) for her final season, which culminated in a national championship earlier this month. While at Princeton, Chen was named the Ivy League tournament’s most outstanding player three times from 2022 to last year. Prior to the draft, ESPN described Chen as
College basketballer Kaitlyn Chen (陳凱玲) has become the first player of Taiwanese descent to be drafted by a WNBA team, after being selected by the Golden State Valkyries in the third and final round of the league's draft yesterday. Chen, a point guard who played her first three seasons in college for Princeton University, transferred to the University of Connecticut (UConn) for her final season, which culminated in a national championship on April 6. While at Princeton, Chen was named the Ivy League tournament's most outstanding player three times from 2022 to last year. Prior to the draft, ESPN described Chen as a
Robinson Cano spent 17 seasons playing in the MLB in front of all kinds of baseball fans, but he said there is something special about his stint with the Mexican Baseball League’s Diablos Rojos. He is not alone. The league last week opened its 100th season, aiming to keep an impressive growth in attendance that began after the national team’s surprise run at the 2023 World Baseball Classic, and is already surpassing some first-division soccer clubs. After finishing third in the 2023 tournament, many casual fans, some of them soccer enthusiasts disappointed after Mexico were eliminated in the first round in the 2022
In-form teenager Mirra Andreeva on Thursday crashed out of the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart, Germany, after going down in straight sets to fellow Russian Ekaterina Alexandrova in the last 16. World No. 7 Andreeva, who already has two titles under her belt this season, lost 6-3, 6-2 against the 22nd-ranked Alexandrova in just over an hour. The 17-year-old Andreeva had defeated her elder sister Erika in the previous round on Wednesday, but Alexandrova quickly took control as she claimed her fourth win over a top-10 player this season. The 17-year-old Mirra Andreeva in February became the youngest winner of a WTA
RSS