World Athletics have approved of the introduction of mandatory cheek swabbing to determine an athlete’s gender.
As reported on Sky Sports News President Sebastian Coe said. “It’s important to do it because it maintains everything that we’ve been talking about, talking about the integrity of female women’s sport but actually guaranteeing it.”
Coe competed at the 1980 Moscow games and Los Angeles 1984 clinching gold for GB in the 1500m in Soviet Russia and clinched silver in the 800m at both games.
It is understood World Athletics’ intention is to have testing in place for athletes that want to compete throughout the female category at the World Championships hosted in Tokyo during September this year.
A World Athletics working group added that the required test will be the SRY gene and, if required, testosterone levels.
The SRY gene is almost always on the Y chromosome, which plays a crucial part in determining male characteristics.
Furthermore, the working group said there was evidence that testosterone suppression in DSD (Differences in sex development) and that transgender athletes could only ever partly mitigate the overall male advantage in the sport of athletics.
