you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]soundsituation[S] 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Archive: https://archive.ph/Ph7le

Quick take #1: Whoever wrote this isn't playing the pronoun game - Telfer's name is used throughout the article instead.

Quick take #2: Did anyone else catch this?

World Athletics put out new guidelines in 2019 that closed off international women's events of between 400 meters and a mile to athletes whose testosterone levels were at 5 nonomoles per liter (nmol/L) or more.

Why confine the 5 nmo/L rule to such a limited range of events? Does this mean that Telfer would have been allowed to compete in the 100 hurdles? In the future, this leaves the 100, 100 hurdles, 200, 4x100 relay, plus every distance running event from 3000 and up open to male athletes who are above 5 nmo/L but under the 10 nmo/L rule set by the International Olympic Committee. For context, average T levels for females are 0.12-1.8, with a ceiling of about 2.4. None of this should be based on testosterone levels anyway, but I still find it a curious loophole.

[–]LilianH 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I think they are confusing two different rules. As far as I'm aware the 5 nmo/L level is all events run by World Athletes. It was introduced in 2019 to bring the rules for trans athletes into line with the rule for intersex athletes they bought in for Caster Semenya which I believe is for that specific event range.

[–]soundsituation[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Ohhh, interesting! Yeah, Caster is an 800 meter specialist but it's not uncommon for runners to do more than one event, or move up or down in distance - and for an 800 runner the realistic alternatives would be 400 and 1500.

Thanks for the insight.