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When It Comes to International Competition, Let’s Test Everyone

By Julie DiCaro

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When it comes to International Competition, singling out women for gender testing is sexist. We propose a radical solution: test everyone.

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When I was a tween / teen, I lived for gymnastics. It was the center of my entire day, every day. I devoured biographies of great gymnasts like Nadia Comeneci and Olga Korbut, checking them out so often that the school librarian permanently set them aside for me. I came home from the gym and immediately went out to my parents’ backyard, where I proceeded to continue practicing my floor and beam routines barefoot, in the grass, often in temperatures that were not-leotard appropriate (much to my mother’s chagrin).

By the time I hit high school, though,  I was as tall as my coaches. If you haven’t noticed, being relatively tall (I finally topped out at 5’8) isn’t ideal for a gymnast. As the years progressed, the sport became harder for me; especially uneven parallel bars, which are typically dominated by relatively slight gymnasts.  The physics are self-explanatory: The more body you have to lift, the harder it is to get the requisite air to complete those release moves on bars and spectacular tumbling passes on floor. I started getting injured more and more. When I was 16, I severely injured my ankle, and that was all she wrote. I never returned to a high level of competition again.

If they awarded Olympic medals for love of a sport, I would have had a shot at making the podium. But when it came to performance, genetics were stacked against me. The average gymnast is is 5’1 and 103 pounds. Sadly for the child in me, I blew past those statistics by time I was 14. I was doomed from the start (thanks Mom and Dad!).

PORTLAND, OR – MARCH 19: (L-R) Anaszt¡zia Nguyen of Hungary, Jamile Samuel of the Netherlands and Dutee Chand of India compete in the Women’s 60 Metres Heats during day three of the IAAF World Indoor Championships at Oregon Convention Center on March 19, 2016 in Portland, Oregon. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images for IAAF)

By now you’re probably wondering why I’m telling you all this. It’s not because I want  your sympathy in the wake of an international smack down by US Gymnasts in Rio (though my shattered gymnastics dreams will happily accept any sympathy you want to fling my way). Rather, it’s because of the ridiculous policy of gender policing elite women athletes like Dutee Chand and Caster Semanya.

If you haven’t been following along, here’s the gist of the problem. Despite an appalling lack of evidence that a higher level of testosterone provides female athletes any competitive advantage whatsoever, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have insisted on testing Semenya and Chand’s testosterone levels to ensure they don’t have an unfair competitive advantage over other runners. The issue brings up all kinds of issues with gender policing, sexism (Semenya and Chand have largely been singled out for testing based on their appearance), and attempting to establish a baseline for what’s considered “normal” in female athletes. There have been some really excellent pieces written by really smart and insightful people on this topic, and I highly recommend taking a few minutes to read them.

But gender issues aside, let’s just take a step back and look at what the IAAF and IOC are doing, which is isolating women athletes based on their looks, and complaining that their genetics give them an unfair advantage over other athletes. From a group of elite athletes. In an international competition.

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA – AUGUST 23: Cameron Van der Burgh and Caster Semenya during the Rio 2016 Olympics Games Team South Africa welcoming ceremony at O.R Tambo International Airport on August 23, 2016 in Johannesburg, South Africa. (Photo by Sydney Seshibedi/Gallo Images/Getty Images)

Perhaps I’ve misunderstood this entire Olympics thing, but isn’t the entire two-weeks a celebration of genetic outliers? Of course, hard work is an important factor in success, but let’s be honest, if you’re on the podium at an international competition, you’ve pretty much won the genetic lottery for your sport, whether your main talent is being able to fly around the uneven bars, hold a rifle stock still and nailing a distant target, or destroying your competition in short sprints.  During the 2012 games in London, I watched swimming commentators break down what made Michael Phelps the “perfect swimmer,” from his freakishly long arms to his flat butt (their words, not mine, Michael!) to his giant flipper-like feet.  Even Scientific American weighed in on the issue. Perhaps we should start testing swimmers’ for wingspans and butt-shapes that fall outside the norm? After all, we don’t want one athlete to have an unfair competitive advantage over the others.

If you’re on the podium at an international competition, you’ve pretty much won the genetic lottery for your sport.

In 2009, the IAAF determined it would only let Semanya compete if she took testosterone-blockers to bring her testosterone level within a “normal range.” Thankfully, the Court of Arbitration for Sport put a stop to that idiocy, but in reviewing  my gymnastics career, I think this kind of thing is a fine idea. In fact, I’d like to go back in time and force all the teeny tiny gymnasts who flew around the uneven bars so effortlessly to take human growth hormone so as to make bars as hard for them as they were for me. I mean, come on, it was never really fair to me that they were genetically programmed to be the perfect size for bars. Let’s level the playing field a little. Boost them up to my height and see how easy it is for them then! And while we’re at it, can we do anything about Usain Bolt? Watching him walk the entire field race after race, it’s obvious something in his physical makeup gives him an advantage over his competitors. Maybe we can give him some tranquilizers, slow him down a little? Aww, who am I kidding? He’d totally still win.

Look, international sporting competitions are chockablock full of people who are genetically built to excel at their chosen sport. Simone Biles has the perfect combination of flexibility and power to make her one of the greatest gymnasts who ever lived. Katie Ledecky is apparently incapable of tiring in a pool. Ever. Usain Bolt sports an EIGHT-FOOT STRIDE (that is not a typo) . And we could all train to throw a shot put every day for the rest of our lives and still not be as good at it as Michelle Carter. When it comes to athletics, you have to work with what you are given, and some athletes are given more than the rest of us.

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If the IAAF is going to analyze women’s bodies to make sure they fall within a “normal range,” it’s only fair to do the same to all athletes.  And if the IOC is going to force the world’s most elite athletes to take steps to make their bodies more “normal,” the Olympics just got a whole lot less fun.

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