Sebastian Coe may have lost the race for the IOC presidency but he's not giving up the bigger fight, for Safe and Fair Play for female athletes in a women's category ring-fenced from male biology.

Lord Coe ­vowed to “doggedly protect the female ­category and do whatever it takes to protect it” as the international federation he leads as president, World Athletics, became the first to introduce DNA tests for elite athletes wishing access to women's competition .

The process is simple: a one‑time cheek swab or dry blood test that is noninvasive. Surveys have shown solid support from female athletes for such checks. They are designed to keep male biology out of women's track and field and will be introduced in time for the sport's showcase World Championships in September. Coe said:

“We’re not just talking about the integrity of female women’s sport, but actually guaranteeing it. And this, we feel, is a really ­important way of ­providing confidence and maintaining that absolute focus on the integrity of competition.”

Cheek swabs and sex tests are nothing new in Olympic sport:

Cheek-Swab Sex Tests Nothing New

Dear Readers, an addition to that last story on DNA tests and World Athletics - a brief history of Sex Tests in sport - and how done well they can avoid unfair play for female athletes

State Of Swimming +Craig Lord

In 2022, World Aquatics was the first Olympic sport to follow World Rugby's 2021 protection of the women's category for females only through rules that bar any athletes developed past the point of Tanner Stage 2 male puberty from women's competition.

World Athletics followed with its own, similar, rules in 2023. At the time, like World Aquatics, the track and field federation cited a range of experts when explaining why the decision had to be taken. Scientific research found that trans women retained many aspects of male biology that cannot be reversed in a way that mitigates advantage over females to the point of anything like a guarantee of safe and fair play.

Strength, endurance, power and lung capacity all stayed significantly higher than observed in female athletes even after testosterone-reduction therapy.

The new World Athletics rules, however, did not cover all eventualities, nor would they have done so if applied to a range of other sports, as a controversial boxing tournament at Paris 2024 showed.

Now, the DNA test will close that loophole. All must undertake a test to confirm whether they are built female or male. That process will also apply to athletes with a difference of sex development (DSD) – some of whom, though reported female at at birth, are biologically male and fed naturally by levels of male testosterone far outside the range of female experience.

World Athletics said it had taken the decision after new research showed that the male advantage exists even before puberty. It said the performance gap from men to women was 3% to 5% in running events, and higher in ­throwing and jumping events.

As he introduced the plan for cheek/­buccal swab tests and blood spot tests, Coe said: “The process is very ­straightfor­ward frankly. Neither of these are invasive. They are necessary and they will be done to absolute medical standards.”

Coe told reporters that World Athletics would be prepared to go to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), where it won a case against South African runner Caster Semenya in 2019, to defend its plan:

“We’ve been to the court of arbitration on our DSD regulations. They’ve been upheld, and they’ve again been upheld after appeal. We will doggedly protect the female category, and we’ll do whatever is necessary to do it. And we’re not just talking about it.”

The latter may well have been aimed at the new IOC president, Kirsty Coventry, who has stated that “protecting the female category and female sports is paramount”. However, even though, the IOC would reconsider its problematic inclusivity "Framework", a "task force" was envisioned, as if the work already done by Aquatics and Athletics had not already shown the IOC everything they need to know.

Coventry has also said ­that lessons needed to be learned from the Paris boxing tournament in which Algerian Imane ­Khelif and Lin Yu‑ting of Chinese Taipei won gold. Both had been barred from the 2023 world ­championships by the International Boxing Association after failing sex tests. The IOC decided to set those aside, and female boxers in Paris were believed to have been defeated by athletes with male biology.

Language and deeper understanding count and here is Carole Hooven on that score.

The DNA tests would settle argument with truth. It remains to be seen if Coventry will take the opportunity to make the IOC wheels spin with a touch more urgency on the protection of women's sport.

Time To Send The Ghosts Of A Troubled IOC Past To Coventry

Weekend Essay - Kirsty Coventry’s coronation as the first Olympic queen in IOC history is said to represent continuity but the Olympic swim champ can be better than that & must reach well beyond the Members present in Greece to the membership watching the white smoke rise from the conclave

State Of Swimming +Craig Lord

Cheek-swab sex tests are nothing new, though they are even simpler and more accurate today than they ever were.

Here's a short extract from Unfair Play by Sharron Davies with me: a reminder of the history of sex testing, or biological verification, in Olympic women's sport:

1. 1948 to 1964: Women were required to arrive at major competitions with a medical certificate from their home country verifying their sex.
2. 1966 to 1967: Women were required to parade naked before a panel of gynaecologists before competitions so that sex could be confirmed depending on the appearance of genitalia.
3. 1968 to 1992: Women were obliged by the IOC to submit to what was often, as it was in my case, a once-in-a-lifetime sex-verification test. A cheek swab was taken from all female athletes arriving at a major competition who didn’t already have a sports-issued certificate. The cells in the swab were tested for chromosomal BARR, the presence of which is assumed to identify a multiple X chromosome, or XX, female. 
4. 1976 to today: Women and men have to submit to random anti-doping tests designed to detect elevated testosterone levels as well as other banned substances, and of the performance enhancing pharmaceuticals in an out of competition. This is far more intrusive than any cheek sex swab and, of course, is mandatory. 
5. 1992 to 1999: Women were asked to submit to genetic testing designed to detect the SRY gene located on the Y chromosome. If it was there, the athlete was deemed to be male. At the Atlanta 1996 Olympics, eight women tested positive for the SRY gene but were still allowed to compete.
6. 2003 to 2015: Women’s sport was no longer ring-fenced for female athletes after the IOC allowed males identifying as women access to female sports two years after sex-reassignment surgery, including a gonadectomy or removal of testes, and a certificate confirming the sex reassignment. 
7. 2015-2021: It’s Open Season in female sport. Surgery is no longer required for male athletes who identify as women to compete with female athletes. We look at that game-changing decision by the IOC in chapter 5.

The issues, links to books stacked with the material and references and names of experts that would help Kirtsy Coventry bypass a task force and get to the action required:

The Week That Was For Fair & Safe Play In Women’s Sport

The implications of Donald Trump’s welcome order in support of women’s sport this week, and particularly in the context of other orders and wider-world challenges, spill beyond American shores in a way the Olympic Movement will need to keep a keen eye on if a history of boycott is not to be repeated

State Of Swimming +Craig Lord

Meanwhile, Coe also pressed ahead with another development ahead of the IOC curve: track and field will increase prize money for podium placers:

Champions received $50,000 in Paris. The precise breakdown for Los Angeles is yet to be announced but Coe confirmed that World Athletics prize money across all events in the next four-year cycle would be $51m.