The international governing body for track and field sport says that biological males will not be allowed to compete against female athletes in the women’s division. World Athletics announced on Thursday that it will bar any competitor who had already gone through male puberty from the female competition categories.
The organization is breaking with high schools and colleges around the United States that are increasingly allowing boys and men to compete in the girls’ and women’s divisions.
The new ban against biological males in female competitions applies to all running distances and throwing events (javelin, discus), as a way to protect women’s sports. No such bans on women competing in men’s categories seem to be of concern at this time.
World Athletics president Sebastian Coe said, “the World Athletics Council has today taken the decisive action to protect the female category in our sport, and to do so by restricting the participation of transgender and DSD athletes.” DSD stands for differences of sex development, an extremely rare condition. Those DSD athletes will have to show a testosterone level below a certain threshold for a specified period of time.
In regard to transgender athletes, the governing body has agreed to exclude male-to-female transgender athletes who have been through male puberty from female World Rankings competition starting on March 31.
“World Athletics conducted a consultation period with various stakeholders in the first two months of this year, including Member Federations, the Global Athletics Coaches Academy and Athletes’ Commission, the IOC as well as representative transgender and human rights groups,” the statement from the group said.
“It became apparent that there was little support within the sport for the option that was first presented to stakeholders, which required transgender athletes to maintain their testosterone levels below 2.5nmol/L for 24 months to be eligible to compete internationally in the female category,” the organization said.
Last year, the international swimming governing body voted to restrict the participation of transgender athletes in women’s events.
FINA members voted 71.5% in favor of a policy that requires transgender swimmers to have completed their transition by age 12 to be able to compete. The vote was taken after collegiate swimmer Lia Thomas won an NCAA championship in the women’s division.
In Alaska, boys who are identifying as females have been allowed to compete in track and field competitions in the girls’ category. In Haines, a boy in 2016 placed third in the small schools’ girls’ 200-meter sprint, and fifth in the girls’ 100-meter race.
In 2022, a biological male student who identifies as a female enrolled in the girls track and field competition at a local Anchorage middle school.
In Washington State, boys who simply state that they are transgender now can compete against girls. In 2022, a sophomore runner who competed as a male in 2021 won first place in 2022 at a Puget Sound-area school cross country meet in the girls’ division.
Reporter Dori Monson reached out to the school district: “They say they are simply following the rules set forth by the Washington Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA) – the governing body for high school athletics and activities in this state. Boys can complete as girls if boys say they are girls. It’s that simple.”
But there has been a significant amount of resistance among high school parents to allowing the trend to continue.
Even former Alaska Rep. Adam Wool, a hardline Democrat and progressive on almost every issue, says admits just science that boys run faster than girls: “My daughter is the fastest runner on her girls high school XC track team. If she were on the boys team she’d be in the middle of the pack. Boys run faster than girls, that’s a scientific fact,” the progressive Fairbanksan wrote on Twitter.
He also pointed out, “The sprinter Allyson Felix won the most world championship medals in history. Her lifetime best in the 400 meters was 49.26 seconds; in 2018, 275 high school boys ran faster.”
Senate Bill 140, the Even Playing Field Act, was sponsored by Sen. Shelley Hughes and co-sponsored by Sen. Mike Shower and Lora Reinbold, to protect the girls’ division from the boys’ unfair advantage. The bill died in committee in the Alaska Senate in the Education Committee, chaired by now-former Sen. Roger Holland.
The Alaska State Board of Education this year passed a resolution to protect girls in sports but the resolution does not have the force of law. It simply asks school districts to pass rules prohibiting the discrimination of girls in sports.
