Track and field’s global governing body bans transgenders from women’s athletic competitions

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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.

26 COMMENTS

  1. Good. Either have them compete as hey were born, or create a new division.

    Let women compete with women.

    • So what about all the women in men’s sports? Fair is fair… women and men can’t compete together.

    • All those women competing in men’s sports are going to like your attitude masked genius. That random girl that wrestles on the high school team? That girl that is now playing on the mlb?

  2. When I first started reading this article I thought. oh, good, common sense has finally returned and yet…..

  3. Ok so men can’t compete with women.. so that means women can’t compete with men. Obviously, it’s the same thing. Now you have to tell that random high school girl wrestler that she can’t compete. Because men can’t compete with women.

    • Women do not hav a physical advantage. If they are competing in men’s sports they are not destroying the chances of success for the men they are competing against. Typically they compete in men’s sports only when they don’t have a women’s team available. With that said, there are few women competing in men’s sports on men’s teams.

    • You can repost this as many times as you want, it’s still stupid and vacuous.

      Which appears to be your wheelhouse, so you go girl.

  4. Wait, so a boy can’t compete with a girl? But a girl can compete with a boy? That doesn’t even really make sense does it? Lots of women enter male dominated sporting events.

    • Do we really need to explain the difference? Do you really think that a biological male that thinks he’s female, competing against actual females, is the same as the occasional girl that wrestles in an all boys team or club?

      Should we use smaller words to break this down for you? Maybe talk slower?

    • On the chance that your statement is rooted in discussion and not ignorance, lets cover some of those reasons. First off, athletics is a competition of physical abilities. All athletic competition pits the physical strength, agility, speed, and coordination of one person/team against another person/team. Now, since women as a group, have less body mass, muscle strength, and smaller bone structure, this places them at an automatic
      disadvantage in competition with males. This disadvantage is there whether the opposition is openly displayed as a male or is in a female uniform. And, even if you feel like a woman, if you were born with male ‘goods’, your body has been programmed to develop as a male. Just simple biology. So the only way to compete fairly, biologically speaking, is male to male or female to female events.
      As to the female that competes in male sports, she can make her own decision. She is bringing no overt physical advantage.

      • How dare you bring actual science and common sense into this discussion.

        Posters across the ‘net will be running for crayons and safe spaces.

    • Testosterone is a powerful hormone whether naturally produced or injected. Females who injected testosterone to artificially attempt to become males can present some of the same features as males, thus females who inject the anabolic steroid known as testosterone can compete with males who naturally produce testosterone.

      According to a little known school called Harvard:

      Testosterone is the major sex hormone in males and plays a number of important roles, such as:
      The development of the penis and testes
      The deepening of the voice during puberty
      The appearance of facial and pubic hair starting at puberty; later in life, it may play a role in balding
      Muscle size and strength
      Bone growth and strength
      Sex drive (libido)
      Sperm production
      ‘https://www.health.harvard.edu/medications/testosterone–what-it-does-and-doesnt-do’

  5. “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.”
    Over 70% voted in favor of this that probably will salvage women’s sporting events IMO. And those that change after puberty can still compete, but as men.

  6. Back in college I dated a member of the women’s track team. She was both sprinter and distance. She was in the best shape of her life.

    I was a high school track athlete. Not good, not bad. My best events were short distances.

    We ran together after class. Occasionally we raced.

    She never once beat me in short distances. Over 3 years. Why?

    I’m 5 inches taller. I have bigger heart and lung capacity. My muscles are denser. My start was always more explosive.

    Why?

    Testosterone. The gift of X/Y. I had it in abundance, she didn’t.

    A former middle of the pack HS track athlete beating a member of the women’s college team. It’s biology in action.

    In fairness, she was in so much better shape than I was she smoked me bad in distance.

  7. Darn it! Just when this debate was getting good, these clowns ban trans “women” from competing. So what they’re finally admitting is that no matter who does what, there are only two genders that exist, right?

    • You’ve missed the point here MJ. Only those trans “women,” with the biological bias of male growth after puberty, were banned. Were you just trying for a “strawman” argument?

  8. All this crap for 1/10 th of 1 % of th population. What exactly are we doing here people ?.? Libs and their smoke and mirrors. Wake up they are trying to destroy us from inside.

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