IAAF goes back to court with testosterone evidence

Research showing that female athletes with high testosterone levels have an advantage will be presented to sports court.

Olympic champion Caster Semenya takes a commanding victory in the 800m at the Diamond League meet in Oslo last month.

Research which shows that female athletes with high natural testosterone levels have a competitive advantage of between 1.8 and 4.5 per cent over those with lower testosterone levels will be submitted to the Court of Arbitration for Sport this month as the International Association of Athletics Federations fights to reinstate its hyperandrogenism regulations.

In 2015, the court struck down the regulations, which decree that athletes must have a testosterone level below 10nmol/l to be eligible for female competition, in a landmark case, judging that the IAAF had not offered sufficient evidence that high testosterone levels were an advantage.

But the court also gave the IAAF two years to come back with more evidence and said it would review its decision.

That ruling opened a loophole for the Rio Olympics, where the three Olympic medallists in the women’s 800m, South Africa’s Caster Semenya, Burundi’s Francine Niyonsaba and Kenya’s Margaret Wambui were all under intense scrutiny. There was speculation that all had abnormally high natural testosterone levels.

On the morning of the women’s 800m final in Rio, IAAF president Sebastian Coe vowed that the organisation would do everything possible to convince the CAS that its testosterone rule was fair.

It funded research from leading scientists Stephane Bermon and Pierre-Yves Garnier (the director of the IAAF’s health and science department), which was published yesterday in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

The two authors studied the serum androgen levels of 2127 male and female athletes and their performance at the 2011 and 2013 IAAF world championships, concluding that female athletes with high testosterone levels had a definite advantage over their rivals who had a lower testosterone reading.

“Our starting position is to defend, protect and promote fair female competition,’’ Dr Bermon said.

“If, as the study shows, in certain events female athletes with higher testosterone levels can have a competitive advantage of between 1.8-4.5% over female athletes with lower testosterone levels, imagine the magnitude of the advantage for female athletes with testosterone levels in the normal male range.

“This study is one part of the evidence the IAAF will be submitting to CAS regarding the degree of performance advantage that hyperandrogenic female athletes enjoy over female athletes with normal testosterone levels.

“We continue to gather more data and research on our journey to providing a fair and level playing field for females in our sport.”

The IAAF’s lawyers have to go back to the CAS before July 27 and present the evidence in order to have the testosterone limit reinstated.

However, the sport’s ruling body is not confident that this will happen before next month’s world championships in London.

“While the IAAF will continue to gather evidence and prepare its case, it should be noted that this process will have no impact on the IAAF World Championships in London this August, as the hyperandrogenism regulations remain suspended pending the resolution of the CAS proceedings,’’ it said in statement.

Semenya has not lost a race in 2016 or 2017, since the hyperandrogenism rule was struck down. Her best time in 2015 was 1:59.59 (there are reports that she was required to take medication to lower her natural testosterone level), but she ran four seconds faster to win in Rio in 1:55.28. She is the only woman to have broke 1:57 for 800m this year.