Indian sprinter Dutee Chand hasn’t raced internationally in more than a year, but on Friday, July 27, 2015, she recorded the biggest victory of her career in Switzerland.
After the final appeal, the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) not only reversed the ban imposed upon her, by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), on account of her high testosterone levels, the court even suspended the federation’s hyperandrogenism policy, which allows it to ban female athletes with high testosterone levels.
Chand was banned from participating in the 2014 Commonwealth Games at Glasgow, after tests had shown naturally occurring higher levels of testosterone in her body. Chand was just 18 at the time and had won a bronze medal, in the 200 m event at the 2013 Asian Athletics Championships.
The IAAF contended that its rules regarding hyperandrogenism is justified because women with high levels of natural testosterone had an unfair advantage. However, the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that because no evidence had been found that Chand’s naturally occurring levels of testosterone gave her an unfair advantage over other competitors, she would be allowed to run. The decision stated that the IAAF has until 2017, to prove otherwise.
The decision is nothing short of a blessing for athletes like Chand, who reach this level after much struggle. The most unfortunate case has been that of Santhi Soundarajan, who was disqualified from the Asian Athletics Championships in 2005, after medical examiners found she had the same disorder. Santhi was discovered in 2012, in dire straits, working as a menial worker in a brick kiln in Tamil Nadu. It was only after Times of India reported this story that the Union government sat up to take notice and allowed a relaxation of gender rules to allow her to complete a course that qualifies her as a coach.
Incidentally, under IAAF rules men don’t face similar strictures on naturally occurring testosterone. The gender policing is exclusively for women athletes.
“It is gender policing of women, plain and simple, and has previously ended with an unsuspecting young woman, often from a country in the Global South, undergoing a harmful medical procedure that many would call female genital mutilation,” wrote sports reporter Kate Fagan on ESPN.
“For example, take Jamaican superstar sprinter Usain Bolt. Why aren’t we outraged at his ridiculously long legs, which allow him to gobble up the track faster than his competitors?,” she added. “So why isn’t Bolt being forced to somehow shorten his legs so they’re only as long as a ‘normal male leg’- a range determined so arbitrarily as to be meaningless?”
“Medically shortening Bolt’s legs may seem like an abstract example. It’s not. It’s frighteningly applicable. Over the years, female athletes flagged as having ‘too much T’ have undergone genital mutilation to try to make their bodies fit back into the ‘normal’ range, a scope randomly determined by the IOC and IAAF,” wrote Fagan.
Male athletes are also tested for testosterone, but only to determine whether it’s natural or a by-product of synthetic doping. Incidentally, doctors testify that hyperandrogenism, which occurs in athletes mainly because of lack of fat in the body and more musculature, is completely curable. But that hasn’t stopped the IAAF from making it a permanent ban or nothing short of witch-hunt here. The Court of Arbitration’s decision is sure to be hailed with relief, in many quarters.
Image Courtesy: BCCL
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