World Athletics president calls future of women’s sport ‘fragile,’ defends testosterone regulations — Times of London

But some athletes do not fit neatly into these rules. The governing body considers an athlete to be transgender if the person’s “gender identity … is different from the sex designated to them at birth.” But the rules do not specify how, and when, an athlete should prove the sex they were assigned at birth. It is also unclear whether the rules apply to athletes whose gender is nonbinary. The organization has a separate set of rules for athletes with differences of sex development (who are sometimes known as intersex).

“There is no question to me that testosterone is the key determinant in performance,” Coe said.

“Look at the nature of 12 or 13-year-old girls. I remember my daughters would regularly outrun male counterparts in their class but as soon as puberty kicks in that gap opens and it remains. Gender cannot trump biology,” Coe said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

“You can’t be oblivious to public sentiment, of course not,” he said. “But science is important.”

“If I wasn’t satisfied with the science that we have and the experts that have been working on this for a long time, this would be a very different landscape,” Coe said, according to The Telegraph.

CNN has reached out to World Athletics for comment on Coe’s statements but has yet to receive a reply.

“We expected there would be some measure of pushback by some people. Quite to the extent that it has blown up, we weren’t fully expecting,” she said. “I just don’t engage with it. It’s not healthy for me to read it and engage with it at all, and so I don’t.”

There are several different hormones that are naturally produced at a range of levels in people of all genders and sexes. Sensitivity to hormones can also affect the development of anatomy and may cause anatomical variations that are not associated with typical binary categories of male or female. There is debate in the scientific community as to whether androgenic hormones like testosterone are useful markers of athletic advantage.

For over a decade, the NCAA has required transgender women to be on testosterone suppression treatment for a year before they are allowed to compete on a women’s team.

USA Swimming then released a set of stricter guidelines that require elite trans women athletes to have at least three continuous years of testosterone levels below 5 nmol per liter, and to prove to a panel of medical experts that they do not have a competitive advantage over cisgender women.

The new rule threatened to make Thomas ineligible to compete at the NCAA championships. However, the NCAA said those rules will be instituted in a phased approach over the coming seasons rather than in the middle of the current season.

“I’d like to point out that I respect and fully stand with Lia Thomas; I am convinced that she is no different than me or any other D1 swimmer who has woken up at 5am her entire life for morning practice. She has sacrificed family vacations and holidays for a competition,” Gyorgy wrote.

“She has pushed herself to the limit to be the best athlete she could be. She is doing what she is passionate about and deserves that right. On the other hand, I would like to critique the NCAA rules that allow her to compete against us,” she added.

After Thomas’ victory last week, several news sites had alleged that the three college swimmers beaten by Thomas staged a protest on the podium.

“Yet no one questions the validity of how cisgender athletes’ unique traits and skills, or who they are, contribute to their success. However, University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas has been unfairly targeted for just that — for being who she is, a transgender woman.

“Like anyone else in this sport, Lia has trained diligently to get to where she is and has followed all of the rules and guidelines put before her. Like anyone else in this sport, Lia doesn’t win every time.

“And when she does, she deserves, like anyone else in this sport, to be celebrated for her hard-won success, not labeled a cheater simply because of her identity,” she said.