Skip to main content
opinion

Over the past few decades, the Olympic movement has slowly ossified into party planning.

The Olympics continues on as a successful – and, for some people, profitable – idea. But the “movement?” There isn’t much to speak of.

There’s no leadership on pressing issues of the day or much bringing of light to darkness, though the International Olympic Committee loves to speechify about such things. Once a breaker of barriers, the Olympics has become a brand champion instead.

Well, careful what you wish for.

Wednesday’s decision to compel South African sprinter Caster Semenya to alter her testosterone levels in order to compete changes that calculation. The Games are now a forward salient in the culture wars.

From this point on, if you would like to have an argument about our two genders and the blurring line between them, the Olympics is where you can go to have it.

Like every great athlete, Ms. Semenya was born with unusual genetic advantages. Unlike most others, hers are measurable with a chemistry set.

As a hyperandrogenic competitor, Ms. Semenya produces far more testosterone than the average woman, which, it is suggested, translates directly into physical performance. To her detractors, Ms. Semenya is a doper, only she happens to do it naturally.

If Ms. Semenya were averagely excellent – say, the fifth-best 800-metre runner in the world – one imagines people wouldn’t care so much. There’d be a lot of room for open-mindedness in that instance.

But Ms. Semenya is dominant in her discipline. A double Olympic gold medalist and, until she was banned, defending world champion. At 28, she is only just entering the peak years of an elite sprinter.

The International Association of Athletics Federations – track’s governing body – made the decision last year to set a testosterone baseline, beyond which female sprinters could not pass. The change was widely perceived as taking direct aim at Ms. Semenya.

The case wound its way to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). The expectation was that the court would come down in Ms. Semenya’s favour, as rulings in the past have.

Instead, the court threaded a logical needle. It agreed the rule was discriminatory, but argued such discrimination was “necessary, reasonable and proportionate” as it applied to power sports like sprinting. The tribunal said its goal was “preserving the integrity of female athletics.”

Ms. Semenya will have to take testosterone-reducing drugs in order to comply with the regulation. This is a new one – performance disenhancement.

Open this photo in gallery:

In this file photo taken on Feb. 18, 2019, Caster Semenya arrives for a hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne.HAROLD CUNNINGHAM/AFP/Getty Images

A sports scientist testifying on Ms. Semenya’s behalf said that such measures would reduce her 800-metre split by seven seconds or more. That sort of time wouldn’t have been good enough to get Ms. Semenya into the final at the Rio Olympics, much less win it.

She now has three options: appeal and spend more time on the sidelines, comply, or switch to a longer distance, where the testosterone rules do not apply. Ms. Semenya is apparently considering a move to the 5,000-metre, at least for the time being.

Of course, none of this is really about Caster Semenya, the individual. Had she been born with a fully functioning third leg and used that advantage to win the Olympics, she’d be celebrated as a delightful curiosity.

A few years ago, people were panting at the idea of Oscar Pistorius competing and winning at the able-bodied Olympics. All concerns that Mr. Pistorius’s prosthetic running blades conferred a measurable advantage were brushed off as small-minded buzzkilling.

The intellectual fallback was that Mr. Pistorius’s circumstances were unique and, therefore, tolerable. How likely were we to see a legless sprinter beating the world’s best again? Not very.

Ms. Semenya’s case isn’t like that. It isn’t a thing entirely unto itself. Instead, it’s widely perceived as the thin edge of the wedge.

The warring camps have already pitched their tents and spent the past couple of years sallying forth on social media to jab at each other.

On one extreme end, you have the biological essentialists. The reductio ad absurdum of this crowd is that if we go far enough down this path, some inconsequential male tennis pro is going to declare himself a woman and win Wimbledon.

(Which, in fairness, does not sound completely absurd. They give away a lot of money at Wimbledon and money is a powerful incentive to shenanigans.)

On the other, you have the gender-fluidity crowd. They would like no limits placed on who can compete as a woman, and argue there isn’t much difference between the sexes anyway.

Every once in a while, the conflict flares up – say, tennis legend Martina Navratilova wading into the matter of transgender athletes – and the issue catches notice for a few days.

But until now, there had been no high-profile banner to organize underneath. Ms. Semenya’s case just provided one.

Caught in the midst of these battles are scientists and athletes, none of whom have been able to mount a completely convincing case for either side. A lot of them are too busy trying to stay well clear of it.

That’s what makes the whole thing so fascinating – it’s not simple. There are decent arguments to be made on either side, both scientific and moral. But in the end, however fine the intentions, someone is going to get jobbed. The CAS decided, for now, that had to be Ms. Semenya.

Is it a good decision? Who’s to say. It’s an intellectually supportable one. Had the court gone the other way, you could say the same thing. Welcome to the dialetheism of sports.

This is where the Olympics comes in. Up until this point, it had managed to avoid this messiness, leaving all the bother and bad press to its constituent federations.

That is no longer possible. One way or the other, the Olympic movement will be forced to declare itself here. It is about to play host to a divisive global argument about what a “woman” is, at least as the term applies at the highest levels of sport.

Is the Olympics for women or is it for inclusiveness? You probably can’t have both.

You probably can’t ask the question that way. You probably have to spend months arguing over the meaning of all the words in it. And you also probably can’t agree on that.

That’s what the Olympic movement is suddenly grappling with – an insoluble conundrum whose solution, should one be reached, will probably enrage a lot of people.

Follow related authors and topics

Authors and topics you follow will be added to your personal news feed in Following.

Interact with The Globe