Track’s proposed eligibility, transgender rules would completely ban Semenya and others

Track and field moved toward adopting rules that would place athletes assigned female at birth but have higher testosterone levels, like Caster Semenya, under the same set of rules as transgender athletes who were born male and transitioned to female.

World Athletics, which in 2023 banned transgender athletes who had transitioned male to female and gone through male puberty, announced recommendations Monday that would apply strict transgender rules to people like Semenya, who was born female but has what the organization describes as naturally occurring testosterone levels in the typical male range.

Previously, athletes like Semenya with differences in sex development (DSD) had to undergo testosterone-suppression therapy for two years to be eligible for races between 400 meters and one mile. Now they may be ineligible for any events if they’ve undergone what World Athletics describes as a male-like puberty that gives them unfair advantages.

In 2023, World Athletics president Sebastian Coe said DSD regulations could impact up to 13 current high-level runners. That included Semenya, a two-time Olympic champion at 800 meters who briefly moved to longer distances after the rules were changed but would now not be eligible for those races either.

In a nod to the fact that the rules could knock Semenya and others completely out of elite track, the recommendations proposed "the adoption of measures to address any reasonable reliance interests DSD athletes may have as a result of new restrictions."

World Athletics said it was reworking its guidelines "to reflect latest developments in science, sport and law." It has opened a "consultation period" on the recommended rule changes through March 5. The next council meeting, at which the rules could be adopted, is set for the end of March, likely after the new president of the International Olympic Committee - a spot for which Coe is running - is selected.

Coe, the Olympic champion middle-distance runner, has been vocal about "protecting the female category” in track and field. More recently, he has said the IOC needs to take a leadership role in the transgender debate instead of letting each individual sport decide their own regulations.

The new guidelines issued by Coe’s current organization, which are geared toward elite and not grassroots sports, come out only days after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order barring transgender athletes from competing in girls sports in the U.S. and pressured the Olympics to do the same.

The track recommendations would also eliminate exceptions for transgender athletes even if they transitioned to female before puberty - a practice thought to be exceptionally rare.

The new rules also would require athletes who compete in the female category to submit a cheek swab to test for the presence of a gene that indicates whether the athlete has a "Y" chromosome present in males.

How the new guidelines might impact Semenya’s protest of the testosterone rules at the European Court of Human Rights is unknown. The court has ruled Semenya was discriminated against by track’s rules, but that did not impact a ruling from the Court of Arbitration for Sport that upheld those regulations.