Olympic bosses suspend sex tests (The Express)
Olympic bosses suspend sex testsEXCLUSIVE The International Olympic Committee has backed down over plans to conduct controversial sex tests at next year’s Games in Sydney following a revolt by athletes and the world’s most powerful sporting federations. They threatened to disrupt preparations for the competition by boycotting the IOC’s ’gender verification procedures’ if mass screening were to be carried out. The IOC’s decision has been hailed as a victory by groups representing women athletes. A commission of athletes voted unanimously to demand the testing be scrapped by IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch and his colleagues on the organisation’s executive board. Faced with what they described as “very strong opinion”, the Olympic power-brokers decided to give way However, the move is conditional. The IOC has described the suspension of sex testing in Sydney as merely an “experiment” with no guarantees that it will become a permanent arrangement. In addition, a ’flying squad’ of specially-selected Olympic medical experts, including a team of gynaecologists, will be in Australia during the Games to target individual athletes if they are deemed suspicious. Professor Celia Brackenridge secretary of Women Sport International, said: “We have been battling a long time to do away with the tests, which we always argued were invalid scientifically and unacceptable on an ethical basis. This news is a positive outcome.” Sex testing was introduced at the 1966 European Athletics Championships in Budapest after allegations that some women competitors were technically male. Initially testing consisted of a visual examination of athletes while naked. The process stirred up deep opposition among competitors. Mary Peters, Britain’s gold medal-winning pentathlete at the 1972 Munich Olympics, remembered the tests as “the most crude and degrading experience I have ever known”. She added: “The doctors proceeded to undertake an examination which, in modern parlance, amounted to a grope.” A second test used an athlete’s genetic make-up as a means of distinguishing gender. But that was ridiculed by scientists, who argued that millions of people could have the same chromosome profile without being of the same sex. However, they would have failed the IOC screening. Later procedures based on hair samples and DNA testing of mouth swabs attracted no less criticism and were increasingly derided as intrusive. Sex testing at the 1996 Lillehammer winter Olympics ran into problems because the Norwegian government was in the process of passing a law declaring such examinations illegal and objected to foreign medics conducting the tests. The biggest federations in sport, including the IAAF, which governs athletics, and FIFA, in charge of world football, also refused to conduct testing at their own competitions and warned of clashes it the IOC tried to enforce sex tests in Sydney Only basketball, volleyball, judo and weight-lifting continue to use gender tests. Peter Tallberg, chairman of the IOC’s athletes commission, said at his Helsinki home: “Testing of this nature is not a part of a proper, modern attitude to gender and equality in sport. Some individuals who have failed the examinations have not attempted to question the findings because of the acute embarrassment, even though they perhaps should have done.” Polish sprinter Ewa Klobukowska, the first woman to fail a sex test, was banned from competition only later to be found to have a condition which would have seen her cleared to run again. Another two women who failed tests have been successful. American swimmer Kirsten Wengler paid for a second opinion and discovered the sports doctors had got it wrong. And Spanish athlete Maria Patino fell foul of the procedures at the 1985 World Student Games but was reinstated after a lengthy battle with the IAAF. By that time, though, her career was over. A spokeswoman at the IOC’s Lausanne headquarters said: “We are keeping the situation under review.”
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