Gender Verification in Sports - Notable Incidents

Notable Incidents

• Prior to the advent of sexual verification tests, German athlete Dora Ratjen competed in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin and placed fourth in the women's high jump. She later competed and set a world record for the women's high jump at the 1938 European Championships before tests by the German police concluded that she was actually a man who then took the name Heinrich Ratjen.
• The Dutch sprinter Foekje Dillema was expelled from the 1950 national team after she refused a mandatory sex test in July 1950; later investigations revealed a Y-chromosome in her body cells, and the analysis showed that she probably was a 46,XX/46,XY mosaic female.
• Sisters Tamara and Irina Press won five track and field Olympic gold medals for the Soviet Union and set 26 world records in the 1960s. They ended their careers before the introduction of gender testing in 1966. There is no proof of a disorder in sexual development in these cases.
• In 1967 the IOC disqualified Erik Schinegger, the 1966 female world champion in downhill skiing, from the 1968 Winter Games in Grenoble.
• Professional tennis player Renée Richards, a transsexual woman, was barred from playing as a woman at the 1976 US Open unless she submitted to chromosome testing. She sued the United States Tennis Association and in 1977 won the right to play as a woman without submitting to testing.
• Indian middle-distance runner Santhi Soundarajan, who won the silver medal in 800 m at the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, Qatar, failed the gender verification test and was stripped of her medal.
• South African runner Caster Semenya won the 800 meters at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics in Berlin. The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), track and field's governing body, confirmed that Semenya had agreed to a sex-testing process that began in South Africa and would continue in Germany. On July 6, 2010, the IAAF confirmed that Semenya was cleared to continue competing as a woman, although the results of the gender testing were never officially released for privacy reasons.

• After female Indian track athlete Pinki Pramanik was accused by a female roommate of rape and later charged, she was gender tested and declared a male although she and other medical experts dispute the claims.