Do Testosterone Reducing Drugs Make Running Fairer?
On Tuesday, a Swiss court controversially upheld that South African middle-distance runner, Caster Semenya, would be required to take testosterone-lowering medication if she is to compete in the Olympic Games in Tokyo next year.
“I am very disappointed,” she said. “But refuse to let World Athletics drug me or stop me from being who I am. Excluding female athletes or endangering our health solely because of our natural abilities puts World Athletics on the wrong side of history.”
Semenya’s rise to glory has been well documented, winning 800m golds in 3 World Championships and a gold at each of the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games. But controversy has followed Semenya for the last decade.
Following her first World Championships in Berlin, 2009, she started to make headlines. The combination of her substantial improvements that year and her appearance culminated in the IAAF asking her to take a sex verification test to confirm whether she was female. A humiliating ordeal but one that sided with the South African. Since then Semenya has risen to fame with her medal haul and a sponsorship with Nike that saw her front a beautiful campaign that read:
“When you are born to do it, Just do it.”
The ruling on Tuesday states that medication is required for differences in sexual development (DSDs) in races ranging between 400 metres and a mile, with the aim of ensuring ‘fair competition’. Testosterone increases muscle mass, strength and haemoglobin (an oxygen-carrying protein in the blood), which affects endurance. Some competitors have said women with higher levels of the hormone have an unfair advantage.
But it is also natural in the human body.
So is requiring one of the greatest athletes on the planet to take hindering drugs fair? The Olympic Games is the biggest celebration of sporting prowess on the planet, where the world’s greatest come together in an attempt to go faster, higher, stronger than ever before. “Faster, higher, stronger” or “citius, altius, fortius” in latin is the Olympic slogan after all.
So in denying Semenya her natural abilities, regardless of how freakish, World Athletics would be denying the billions of viewers around the globe a chance to see another great.One could argue Usain Bolt has an unfair advantage because of the amount of fast-twitch fibres in his body. Or Michael Phelps has an unfair advantage because of his 80 inch wingspan.
Testosterone is one aspect of a humans physiology so is it fair to penalise one athlete for a physical attribute over another?
When you look back at the iconic Olympic moments, you mind is cast to Bolt’s 9.58 second 100 meters or Nadia Comăneci’s straight tens in the gymnastics. These are the downright freakish performances. Freakish, not as a negative in the slightest. Freakish meaning rare, meaning anomalous, meaning far beyond what is considered possible.
For other athletes, it must be hard to see somebody built different to you, someone with an advantageous body stand by your side in the starting blocks. But we’re never going to get a truly level playing field.
Forgive my naivety but I want to see the records tumble, the history books rewritten. Not a watered down field so that everyone has a chance. The Olympics is the best of the best, and should be kept that way.
