Sebastian Coe, president of World Athletics, asserts that when it comes to transgender athletes, “fairness” should take priority over “inclusion.” “If you pushed me and you said if you had to make a choice between fairness or inclusion, I will always head towards fairness because that’s what sports has to be based on,” Coe told Insider.
Presently, transgender women are permitted to compete in World Athletics events if their testosterone levels stay below 5 nmol/L for a 12-month period. The Court of Arbitration for Sport established the testosterone levels for athletes who identify as transgender or who have differences in s-xual development (DSD).
Coe describes himself as “socially liberal” and not worried about people’s individual choices, as he noted that the rules are “important.” “The first principle is for me the integrity of women’s sport,” Coe said. “And if you don’t protect that, then the risk is that you will lose female sport. And that is not something that I want to be presiding over.”
Coe made his remarks a couple of days before the beginning of the World Athletics Championship that took place in Eugene, Oregon.
Caster Semenya, a runner from South Africa, will compete in the 5,000-meter race there. Semenya, an inters-x athlete who won two Olympic medals in the 800 meters, had to switch sports due to World Athletics rules that limited the amount of testosterone that athletes may use in races between the 400 and the mile.
Semenya has filed numerous appeals, but they have all been rejected. “The science here is that testosterone is the key determinant in sporting performance,” Coe said.
“We do have two categories. We have an age category because we think it’s better that athletes — you know, 14-year-old athletes aren’t thrown in against Olympic champions in their 20s. And we have a gender category for the very simple reason that if you didn’t, a woman would never win another sporting event. And that’s something that flies in the face of common sense and the philosophy that we have adhered to at World Athletics.”
After FINA, the governing body for swimming voted to prohibit transgender athletes from participating in women’s elite races if they had passed through any stage of the male puberty process, Coe had previously made similar remarks.
“We see an international federation asserting its primacy in setting rules, regulations and policies that are in the best interest of its sport,” Coe told.
“This is as it should be. We have always believed that biology trumps gender, and we will continue to review our regulations in line with this. We will follow the science.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: FINALLY SOME DARN COMMON SENSE IN THE WORLD!!! Men vs Men, Women vs Women, Trans vs Trans. That’s how it should be done.
