Top athletes: miracles of nature or beautiful freaks?
Will genetic tests be the future of the Olympics?
Top athletes: miracles of nature or beautiful freaks?
I thought, let me throw another cudgel into the fray, now that calm has relatively returned to the Olympic issue surrounding Imane khelif, female boxer or not.Like many, I was mistaken at the outset that this was purely a transgender issue, as we have seen before with women's cycling and swimming; competition rigging resulting in bodily injury this time.... As the international boxing federation and the IOC continued to contradict each other about which sex Imane actually had- covered by medical secrecy- the "specialists" also began to disagree with each other about what exactly determines one's sex: only chromosomes or alsohormones? Harvard's American endocrinologist Carole Hooven interfered in the discussion: for perhaps Khelif had been born with external female sex characteristics and thus not illogically registered as a woman right away in Algeria, but suffered from the rare 5-ARD abnormality ( at first I thought it referred to a new German TV channel), in which in the fetus both testes -which produce testosterone- and ovaries are formed; something we would have conveniently called a hermaphrodite in the past, later becoming intersexuality.
The result is a woman with high testosterone levels and thus a large muscle mass similar to that of a man, something we would have formerly called a manwoman. That's nothing new; think of the many hefty ears and legs of ladies at the Olympics in the past, and then not just steroid-pumped Eastern blockbusters in the shot put, but also, for example, American sprint star Florence Griffith who-how clever!-emphasized her femininity with her strikingly long red-painted nails that could distract attention from her oversized-yes, masculine-like-thighs.
A confusing press conference by the -Russian-led International Boxing Federation that had previously suspended Khalif, early this week, revealed little new, beyond the fact that the Greek doctor and the Russian president contradicted each other: one was talking about chromosomes, the other about hormones, an old chicken-or-the-egg discussion, which was supposed to serve primarily a political purpose; to give air to Russian frustration over the IOC's boycott of Russia.
My daughter, a biologist, wondered aloud yesterday over breakfast whether in this context perhaps not all top athletes are genetic exceptions, deviating from what we think of as standard genetics. After all, aren't the performances of a Pogacar and Evenepoel during the Tour de France superhuman? The terms "superman" are then also eagerly and frequently brought up by the sports press after a hellish mountain ride in the Alps. Is Simone Biles' breathtaking acrobatics in gymnastics still normal? Do Kenyans owe their superiority in the marathon to the genetics of the Kalenjin ethnic group (greater lung capacity, longer muscles) to which they belong? Above all, let's not forget the countless hours of training and willpower it all takes, although that too could be genetic, of course. Do we need to weigh everyone's hormone levels on the pharmacist's scale to set the bar equal from the start? It would immediately take away the magic of athletic performance. Now there is a big difference between individual sports, team sports and combat sports.
This particular case of Algerian boxer Imane was obviously very noticed because of her sport;boxing, which involves physical injury to the opponent. Khhelif herself, the Olympic thought in mind, could have shown a bit more restraint at the start of her match, instead of immediately pounding heavily into the Italian opponent, but that's something we would never have asked a Muhammad Ali eithe.r Why did the Algerian ever precisely choose boxing as a sport and not -I'm just thinking out loud- the hop-step-jump(in this case the hop-step-egg-jump). The situation in women's boxing also once again points the finger at the organizing IOC, which at the opening ceremony interpreted the order word "diversity" purely as a gender issue, which is particularly strange when you have a choice from a diversity of 203 participating countries and all the more cultures. The IOC is thus ultimately reaping the storm resulting from the confusion they themselves have sown from the start. The question now is whether the next games will be dominated by genetics and we will see a body scan of the athletes at the start of a competition, live blood analysis included, with penalty points for congenital defects, calculated by artificial intelligence as in a dystopian science fiction movie.Also remains the question of whether we should consider Imane Khalif a woman or a man,If complicated tests do not
Also remains the question of whether we should consider Imane Khalif to be a woman or a man,If complicated tests cannot provide a definitive answer, I suggest some five-simple old tests, at the risk of being sued by the Department against sexist jokes:1. -in 30 seconds and in one fluid motion parallel reverse parking.2. -does she sometimes confuse a left hook with a right one? 3.Does she manage to unsuspectingly walk past a stall with silver jewelry in the souk?4.Does she use tampons only to stem the blood of her antagonists? 5.Finally, the litmus test for the Algerian: does she wear pants on the streets of Algiers or walk veiled like her sisters? Clearly yet another assignment for one of our investigative journalists!