Gender testing returns to track, stirring up harsh memories and doubts that date to the 1980s

A general view of the stadium on day one of the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Saturday, Sept. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae)

TOKYO — The woman whose genetic test in the 1980s led sports leaders to conclude it was too intrusive, not definitive enough and, ultimately, not worth keeping, said she was faced with “a sadness that I could not share” after results from that test upended her life.

The man who discovered the gene that led to that test being developed called it “surprising that, 25 years later, there is a misguided effort to bring the test back.”

In a recent major policy overhaul, World Athletics brought back the test this year, requiring any athlete seeking to compete in the female category at world championships, which opened Saturday, to submit to the test by Sept. 1.

The federation portrays implementation of the SRY gene test, designed to detect a ‘Y’ chromosome found in males, as a common-sense approach to tackle an issue that has bedeviled and divided sports for decades. Federation president Seb Coe says the policy is tailored to foster the “protection and the promotion of the integrity of women’s sport.”

In a telling indicator of the lack of unanimity around the issue, athletes from France hit roadblocks in meeting the deadline because their country has banned that sort of screening for non-medical purposes. Most were forced to have the test conducted at foreign training sites on their way to Tokyo for the championships.

A day before the championships started, World Athletics said about 95% of female athletes set to compete in Tokyo had completed the test. Confidentiality rules make it difficult to determine who, if anyone, did not take the test, and if any of those who did have been ruled ineligible.

How one upended an athlete’s world

Issues with this test began decades before this 2025 reboot.

The most notable case involved Spanish hurdler María José Martínez-Patiño, who wrote in a 2005 essay in The Lancet that she “passed” her first gender test prior to the 1983 world championships and was given a “Certificate of Femininity” that allowed her to compete.

But two years later, she forgot the certificate on her way to the World University Games and was subjected to another test that came back with inconclusive results. Team doctors told her to fake an injury to explain her subsequent absence from the meet.

“I sat in the stands that day watching my teammates, wondering how my body differed from theirs,” she wrote. “I spent the rest of that week in my room, feeling a sadness that I could not share.”

Further testing ultimately revealed Martínez-Patiño had androgen insensitivity -- meaning that though she carried a “Y” chromosome, her body did not respond to testosterone and the hormonal messages it provides to become male.

“I lost friends, my fiancé, hope, and energy,” she wrote. “But I knew that I was a woman, and that my genetic difference gave me no unfair physical advantage.”

Key scientist questions effectiveness

In part because of the trauma Martínez-Patiño endured, medical experts convinced the International Olympic Committee and other sports federations to abandon gene testing. It was gone prior to the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Among those involved in sidelining the test was Andrew Sinclair, the scientist who discovered the gene that results in a positive test for the “Y” chromosome.

His recent essay in The Conversation detailed the many ways the SRY test can go wrong. One of them is an inability to detect the androgen insensitivity that Martinez-Patino had. In a nod to the Spanish athlete’s landmark case, World Athletics has carved out an exception for people with “Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.”

But Sinclair outlined other potential difficulties. They could include problems generating accurate lab readings in poorer nations without sophisticated equipment, and that the test is sensitive enough that a male lab technician can inadvertently cause a false result by mishandling it.

“Given all the problems outlined above, the SRY gene should not be used to exclude women athletes from competition,” Sinclair concluded.

Madeline Pape, a former elite runner who studies gender policies in sports, says “what’s interesting is the way the sport forgets.”

“We’re right back to where we’re using an archaic technology for defining eligibility for the women’s category,” she said.

Transgender, DSD athletes under same rules

As part of its rules reset, World Athletics wrote virtually the same guidelines for transgender athletes as for those with differences in sex development (DSD) -- two sets of athletes whose issues are often conflated.

DSD athletes were born with a typical male XY chromosome pattern, but identified as female at birth and raised as girls.

While World Athletics acknowledged no transgender females currently compete at the elite international level, it created an exception allowing DSD athletes who had followed previous guidelines, which involved them taking drugs to suppress their testosterone level, to be grandfathered in to future competitions under the old rules.

The exception would not have helped Caster Semenya, the two-time Olympic gold medalist who has DSD and refused to suppress her testosterone. Her long-running case has served as a focal point for the issue of transgender and DSD athletes in track.

Earlier this year, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in favor of Semenya, saying her rights to a fair hearing in her sex-eligibility case were violated, which kept alive the seven-year-old legal struggle for the now 34-year-old champion.

“I think Caster is, in a lot of ways, the unfortunate martyr for a lot of this,” said Anna Posbergh, a Florida State researcher who studies gender in sports. “I applaud Caster for the strength she’s had to push back. But I think it was inevitable that at some point, (the test) was going to make a comeback, given the political direction the world seems to be going.”

NCAA, USOC fall in line with Trump

In the United States, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” that’s designed to bar transgender athletes from female sports.

Among those that have fallen in line are the NCAA, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and the University of Pennsylvania in a well-known case involving transgender swimmer Lia Thomas.

The new IOC president, Kirsty Coventry, ran on seeking clarity on the transgender issue, seconding Coe’s desire to “protect” the female category.

Boxing’s international federation, after seeing its sport subsumed by this issue at the Paris Games, has instituted the same mandatory genetic screening as track and field.

Some take test but have reservations

One of America’s most outspoken athletes on the topic of gender in sports is U.S. 1,500-meter champion Nikki Hiltz. Hiltz was assigned female at birth and came out as transgender and non-binary in 2021. Hiltz called sex testing “a slippery slope.”

“Obviously, I’m gonna do it. I’m not gonna, like, protest it or anything. I just don’t like the precedent that it sets,” Hiltz said.

Faith Kipyegon, the 1,500-meter world-record holder and three-time Olympic gold medalist, said there’s no use trying to fight World Athletics over the test.

“This is a new thing,” she said, “and we’re all going to have to face it.”

Eddie Pells, The Associated Press