The article I read said the muscular advantages of men disappeared over time when hormones are taken. My questions to the OC are: who is going to verify that the hormones are taken regularly and are there any structural differences that favor men such as narrower hips.
Magiver, once you get the orchi, even if you stop taking the hormones you won’t get the advantage of testosterone because you’re not making it anymore.
Seriously, nobody is going to have a sex change just to win the Olympics. Y’all are being silly.
KellyM why do you think it’s silly. The amount of money to be had as a top female athlete compared to a second rung male athlete would be huge. Especially in such sports a Golf and Tenis. Even in the relitively amateur scope of the Olympics there is large amounts of money to make in sponsorship deals for top female athletes.
As time goes on surgery techniques will improve, and it will become easier and easier to have sex change opperations, and they will be available in more parts of the world.
A separate question, but somewhat related, are women who have had breast reduction (even removal) surgery still elligable to compete in the Olympics?
Bippy, nobody is going to go through the pain – physical and psychological – of reassignment just to make a bit more money.
This isn’t like dyeing your hair green for a while.
Maybe you can’t appreciate it because you haven’t been through it. Those of us who have know what we’re talking about.
On top of that, I’d be willing to bet that a mediocre male athlete is still better enabled to make a living at it than even a top female athlete. And I doubt that a mediocre male athlete would be even close to top of class as a female athlete, after what reassignment does to one’s body.
There were 2 parts to my question. As a man, your hips do not spread out as they do for a woman (if I’m wrong, please correct me). I’m not going to make a definitive statement and say this is relevant, but I was under the impression it made a difference in sprinting.
And I agree that someone would not do it just to win a medal. That does not discount the possibility of a sex-changed person wanting to participate in sports, which has already happened.
I was in an Olympics - 1984 at Los Angeles. I competed in the 4 x 100km Men’s Team Time Trial (an event which is sorely missed these days) and the Men’s Road Race. Cycling if you didn’t know.
Anyways, the Los Angeles games ironically were the last truly “amateur” games if that makes any sense. The organisers at LA recognised that they were using the same original 1932 stadium and they actually showed a lot of good taste in many areas - far more so that the gaudy Coca Cola games of 1996.
If memory serves me correctly, in 1984 synchronised swimming was introduced at the LA Games and Steffi Graf won the women’s tennis final - which was also a sport which was introduced for the first time. It was becoming quite apparent even then that the Olympics had entered the inexorable expanding tragedy which is known in the corporate world as “mission creep”.
What I’m getting at here is this - if you keep fucking around with things, you can ruin a good thing and just plain lose sight of the forest for the trees. By 1984, the Olympics were starting to go the way of Microsoft - they were trying to be all things to all people - and worst of all, any lobby group whose sport wasn’t represented was screaming discrimination or bias or collusion or whatever.
Anyways, the same thing happened with the original Mustang Fastback - it was just perfect. But Ford kept thinking they had to keep tinkering with it because everybody else kept changing THEIR models every two years and so Ford mistakenly kept thinking that changing the Mustang in appearance and weight was a good thing too - and it wasn’t. By 1973 the car was a bloated, land yacht joke of it’s former self. Sure, it’s cool to refine the suspension and the electronics, but they should have just kept the original size and shape and merely concentrated on quality - not quantity.
And that’s what has become of the Olympics. When I was a competitor I think the grand total of competitors was just on 4,000 athletes I’m pretty sure. Just 20 years later and the projected number of competitors at Athens is going to be 12,000 - and quite frankly, the snob in me would argue that only half of them are going to be true athletes in the traditional sense of the word.
The Olympics used to be about “Longer, Farther, Faster” but they’ve introduced so many subjective sports and events which require judges to tally scores that well, for mine, the whole shebang has simply become a charicature of it’s former self.
And to introduce transsexuals as competitors just kinda seems perfect in a perverse, ironic, disillusioned way for mine.
Certainly, even as an Australian I was so bored with the Olympics by the time they came down here to Sydney in 2000 that I didn’t watch much of it on TV at all. I watched the opening ceremony and it was so middle of the road I just thought to myself “Well that just fucking sucks…” At least LA had the awesome Rocket Man dude.
I was invited to some pre Games gala evenings where all former Olympians were invited and to be honest, it was pretty obvious that the whole concept had moved on from being about the athlete to instead, being all about the show - and umm yeah… I’ve said enough.
For obvious reasons, I turned down every and all invitations to do any public speaking. My particular message was DEFINITELY not the message they wanted to hear I suspect.
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*Originally posted by KellyM *
Maybe you can’t appreciate it because you haven’t been through it. Those of us who have know what we’re talking about.
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you went through physical pain and massive massive surgery to live the life you felt was the right life for you… maybe someone else would do the same? is that hard to belive?
somewhere, I imagin there is someone that feels strongly enough that their path in life is to be a great sports star that they would be willing to trade their sexuality to achive it. steroids to it to a minor degree and there is no shortage of people takeing steroids if you let them, even if it was 1% of 1% that would be someone.
I agree with Kelly that few, if any, would go through that JUST to enter or win the Olympics. But also, this COULD be a significant advantage.
But if “mens” and “womens” games really are to have significance, then there is a reason for this division. I am not sports fan, but iot does seem like in most of the measured sports, the mens scores are higher (nearly?) always than the womens scores.
I dunno, this is a tough question. I can almost see the reasoning behind having no gender differences at all in the games, but I am not convinced about that either.
Sorry, this is one I’d have to say: “we need to think about this some more”.
It should also be considered that a man wishing to cheat through having a sex change opperation would have the absolute minimum changes possible to qualify. Smallest possible hormone doses, little or no plastic surgery. As such they would likely go through far less than a true trans-sexual would. In much poorer coutries the money that an athlete could make would also be a very strong insentive compared to how much an insentive such money would seem to be to people in ritch coutries.
The only sports I know where men and women compete on equal basis are croquet and Kendo. I think several of the equestrian sports and maybe lawn bowling are also on an equal basis.
Boo Boo Foo Totally agree… Boxing and Modern Pentathalon are out of favour and Ballrom Dancing is in…
Back to the OP… (sort of)
Wasn’t there controversy in the 1920’s(ish) about the sex of a runner in one of the women’s events? I don’t remember any details, can anyone shed any light?
Helen Stephens (the gold medalist in the 1936 100 meters) was accused of being a man, but Stella Walsh (the gold medalist in the 1932 100 meters, and silver medalist in the 1936 100 meters) turned out to be (legally) a man when “her” autopsy was performed in 1980. She had mosaicism, I believe.
If you’ve seen my attempts at linking, be glad I haven’t tried to find a link…
Keep in mind that the DNA testing is terribly unreliable, 1 in 400 (about 80 odd) women at the Atlanta games failed the test but were found to be women after a physical examination. The IAAF ceased to use the tests in 1992.
Sorry 8 or 9 athletes at Atlanta.