March 22, 2025

New IOC President, Christine and Beatrice compete, and a note on statistics

In this newsletter:

• We have a new IOC president: Kirsty Coventry. What does that mean for athletes with sex variations?
• Beatrice Masilingi competed in the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Nanjing, and Christine Mbomba competed at a meet in South Africa.
• A note about numbers and estimations of trans and intersex athletes.
• An very nice update about some awards for Tested.

IOC ELECTION RESULTS

The election for the new IOC president happened on on Thursday, and Zimbabwe's Kirsty Coventry won¹. Some folks might be surprised by this. A lot of the mainstream coverage of the election sort of assumed that Coe was a shoe in — essentially because he was the only name that most people had even heard of, and he was doing a full out press blitz while the others were less vocal. But the rumors I heard was that a fair amount of IOC folks found Coe too blustery, too political. The IOC prides itself in the fantasy that it is an apolitical organization, and Coe's commitment to decidedly political causes (like banning trans women from sports, and talking about it all the time) might have hurt him. Especially in the wake of the election of Donald Trump, which seems to have blown back a bit on folks connected to him in either style or substance (or both).

Coventry is the first woman to get the IOC job, and the first person from the African continent to hold it. She's a former swimmer, has served as the head of the IOC's athletes commission, and has been Zimbabwe's minister of sport since 2018².

Compared to the other candidates (who I wrote about a little bit here), she was in some ways most in line with outgoing leader Thomas Bach's vision for the IOC. So much so that The Telegraph headline about Coe losing reads "Lord Coe’s defeat by ‘Mugabe’s golden girl’ proves IOC has no desire to change." For the purposes of this newsletter, we're going to focus on what she might mean for the participation of athletes with sex variations and trans athletes.

On the latter, Coventry is clear: she does not think that trans athletes should be allowed to compete in the category that represents their lived gender. She was asked explicitly about this at the press conference announcing her win, and said that “we are going to create a task force that will look at the transgender issue. Once we’ve made the decision collectively with the international federations we will not move from that decision.”³

During the press conference she wasn't asked about athletes with sex variations, or intersex athletes. But one news outlet — NRC — did ask her about it. (The following is translated from Dutch via Google Translate, so apologies for any mistranslations):

Little attention is paid in this election to the participation of intersex (DSD) athletes such as Caster Semenya, the two-time Olympic champion who had to quit athletics because her testosterone level was too high according to the World Athletics Federation.

She is silent. “Do you know that you are the first journalist to ask me about that?”

How could that be?

“Maybe because the world athletics federation has such a strict policy that no one dares to say anything against it. But it is an important topic, because the number of intersex athletes is many times greater than the number of trans athletes.”

She looks away.

Does it affect you?

"Enormous. I know Caster well, we competed as African athletes at the same tournaments. I found it very painful that the World Athletics Federation publicly announced who or what she is. That her medical file was made public. It is important that athletes like Caster are better protected."

A frequently heard sound is that top-level sports should be protected from athletes like Semenya. But you mean the other way around?

She nods. “I wonder if we are doing enough to support and protect these athletes.”

This exchange suggests that she might be sympathetic to women with sex variations, which could put her at odds with World Athletics and their recently recommended rules. But what the IOC will actually do about the fact that WA's regulations conflict with their own recommendations is still unclear. Perhaps nothing, which is how the IOC has chosen to proceed under Bach.

We won't really know until Coventry gets into the position.

So it's bad news for trans athletes (which was bound to be the case no matter who won the IOC position, probably), but perhaps good news for intersex athletes? Or at the very least, not terrible news.

---

BEATRICE MASILINGI IN NANJING

Beatrice Masilingi, a Namibian sprinter who trains with Henk Botha and Christine Mboma (and who made the finals in Tokyo alongside Christine) went to Nanjing to compete in the World Athletics Indoor Championships. Beatrice has been in the same boat as Christine — forced to choose between her career and her desires for her body. Like Christine, she opted to medicate and lower her testosterone levels (with the help of Henk's wife, Dr. Elize Botha.)

(It's interesting to note that the world indoor records for the 60 meters haven't been touched since the 1990's — the most recently set record for the distance indoors is February, 1995, when Russia's Irina Privalova ran it in 6.92 seconds. Beatrice's best time at the distance is 7.35 seconds, so she's nowhere close to that.)

Unfortunately, before the first heat, Beatrice fell while testing her blocks and dislocated her shoulder. She posted a photo on Instagram, showing her left arm in a sling, writing that "the shoulder is fine now 🙏🏾 Thank you for your support ❤️." It's a bummer that we didn't get to see her race. I've asked Henk what's next for her. We're coming to the end of the indoor season, and starting to look at outdoor races soon.

---

CHRISTINE COMPETES IN JOHANNESBURG

Christine's training hasn't been going as well as Beatrice's. She isn't going to the Indoor Championships, but did race in South Africa on the 19th. She ran the 100m in 12.07. That's slow, unfortunately. Two second slower than her personal best at that distance.

When the result was posted on Twitter people reacted with surprise and frustration. "What did they do to her 💔💔💔💔💔" wrote one account. "World athletics drugged her up and ruined her natural DNA now her buddy [sic] can't function properly... but I think she can still do some good things" wrote another.

The disparity between Christine and Beatrice's performance is not a scientific study. But it is interesting to look at. Both women are taking the same combination of drugs, that aim to do the same things, and are shooting for the same testosterone level. They have the same coach, and the same resources. They train together. They eat together. And yet, they clearly are not being impacted the same way. Again, this isn't a study, but it does highlight how variable these things can be. There is no magical number for testosterone that makes athletes good or bad, fast or slow. Two people with the exact same level of testosterone, achieved through the same means, can perform incredibly differently for all kinds of reasons. Humans are not machines.

If World Athletics adopts the rules they've proposed, it's unclear what will happen next to athletes like Beatrice and Christine. As I wrote about here, there is vague wording in the recommendations to "adopt measures to address the reasonable reliance interests of those who are currently in the pipeline." But it's not clear what that means.

The consultation period for those proposed rules closed on March 5th, and they will be discussed and voted on at the World Athletics Council meeting at the end of March (around now). They may or may not decide to announce the new rules right after that meeting, but I'd guess that they will. So in the next couple of weeks we'll know more about what, specifically, the new rules might entail.

---

BEING TRANS ISN'T MEASLES

Okay I'll caveat this next bit by saying that this is my own personal opinion and I don't think it's necessarily 100% right. With that stated, here's a thing I'd like to complain about to you all: I do not love the viral posts I keep seeing that say things like "there are now more people with measles in the US than there are trans athletes playing in college."

For one thing, we have no idea how many trans athletes are playing in college. The number most people cite is 10, which is based on testimony the NCAA president gave to a Senate last year⁴. He was asked "How many transgender athletes are you aware of?” and he answered "less than 10." That doesn't mean there are less than 10 athletes playing college sports, it just means that the head of the NCAA personally only knows about less than 10 of them. Plus, the NCAA isn't even the only collegiate sports governing body out there — there is also the NAIA, which oversees an additional 83,000 students.

As I write this the CDC has 378 confirmed measles cases in the US⁵. Are there more than 378 trans athletes playing sports in college? I don't know! NOBODY DOES and that's fine⁶. We don't need a registry of trans athletes. But it's also worth remembering that these bills and attacks don't only apply to collegiate athletes — they want to ban trans athletes at every level⁷. Are there more than 378 trans athletes playing sports in schools around the country? Maybe! Again, we do not know!

So for starters, I'm allergic to people confidently asserting statistics they literally cannot be confident about.

If it was just that, I'd let it go. But I'm also not in love with comparing trans folks with measles. The right already thinks that being trans is some terrible disease that should be eradicated. (This is not a metaphor, prominent anti-trans activists have referred to being trans as a disease that children can "catch.") Measles IS a terrible disease that should be eradicated. What does this comparison get us? What is the thing we're supposed to take away from it?

I understand that the intended idea is to point out the fact that right wing fascists are spending their time worrying about the wrong things (trans athletes) rather than the right ones (measles) — and that is true. But I have to believe that we can make that point without drawing a direct line between an marginalized and currently deeply vulnerable identity and a deadly illness. It's easy for me to see folks taking the wrong point from this: that we should treat both as outbreaks, and try to work to cure/eradicate both things.

---

Thank you for voting for Tested!

Last newsletter I asked you all to vote for the podcast in the Sports Podcasting Awards. I'm pleased to report that thanks to you all, we won GOLD in the Best Equality and Social Impact Podcast category and SILVER in the Best Olympics and Paralympics Podcast and Diverse Voices Award categories.

The show was also recently shortlisted for two more awards: Best History Podcast and Best Documentary Podcast at the Ambies, and Best Sports Podcast at the New York Radio Festival Awards.

Awards are funny things. They're amazing to win, and also not necessarily a true reflection of what is actually the best work out there. I never quite know how to balance being grateful with being realistic about the weird politics of awards. If I win an Ambie, I had to give a 30 second acceptance speech, which is absolutely terrifying.

It sounds really cheesy, but truly the best reward for Tested to me is hearing from listeners that it helped them navigate these conversations. In my little cover letter that I write when applying to awards, I brag about our download numbers and all that (because you have to) and then I say this, and I really, really mean it:

But perhaps more importantly to me, my inbox has been flooded with messages from listeners telling me that the show has helped them have hard conversations about sex, gender, and sports — particularly in the wake of the news surrounding Algerian boxer Imane Khelif who was accused of being somehow “not a woman” during this past summer’s Olympics. Messages like this one: “I had a great, but slightly difficult, conversation about Imane Khelif today with my mom's college friend who was visiting her and I felt like I was able to articulate some stuff a lot better because of your work and she walked away like ‘let the woman box.’”

If you have stories like this, please do send them to me! They are the best best best thing I can ever receive.

Until next time,

Rose