Female Runners Must Submit to Genetic Testing
World Athletics, the governing body of track and field, will require athletes competing in women's events to submit to chromosomal testing.
World Athletics announced it will require chromosomal testing, including cheek swabs and dry blood-spot tests for competitors in women’s events.
Chromosomal testing was previously done in track and field but was discontinued in the 1990s. The purpose is to determine whether an athlete has a “Y” chromosome, an indicator of male natal sex, regardless of an athlete’s external genitalia.
World Athletics is the governing body of international track and field. Its president, Sebastian Coe, said that athletes will only have to take a chromosomal test once during their career.
“It’s important to do it because it maintains everything that we’ve been talking about, and particularly recently, about not just talking about the integrity of female women’s sport, but actually guaranteeing it,” Coe said during a news conference at a meeting of the World Athletics Council in Nanjing, China.
“We feel this is a really important way of providing confidence and maintaining that absolute focus on the integrity of competition,” he said.
It’s unclear whether the tests will be in place before the world championships in September.
Coe said new regulations are being drafted and that a testing provider will be confirmed over the next few weeks, reports NBC News.
Coe, a two-time Olympic gold medal winner for Great Britain and a former Conservative member of Parliament, said that the IOC needs to more decisively push for transgender exclusion from women’s sports instead of allowing each individual sport to decide their own regulations.
World Athletics previously banned transgender athletes who had undergone male puberty from competing in women’s events in 2023.
In February, World Athletics proposed recommendations that would apply strict rules to athletes assigned female at birth with naturally occurring testosterone levels in the typical male range. Those recommendations came after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order barring transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports, and the U.S. State Department vowed to permanently ban transgender athletes seeking to compete in women’s sports from entering the United States.
Other anti-transgender advocates have demanded that the NCAA adopt a similar policy requiring chromosomal testing.
Research from the Inclusion Project finds that genetic testing can be extremely costly, with the personal cost to athletes exceeding $10,000, depending on which type of tests are required.
For chromosomal testing, or karyotyping, which is done by through a “cheek swab” test, the cost can range from $1,000 to $2,500 per athlete. For disputed cases, where an athlete wants to appeal a ruling or may need to submit additional testing, costs can potentially exceed $15,000 per athlete.
Coe defended the chromosomal testing requirement, stating that he believed it would withstand legal challenges.
“Neither of these are invasive,” he said. “They are necessary, and they will be done to absolutely international medical standards….We will doggedly protect the female category, and we’ll do whatever is necessary to do it.”
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