Sex verification in sports occurs because eligibility of athletes to compete is restricted whenever sporting events are limited to a single sex, which is generally the case, as well as when events are limited to mixed-sex teams of defined composition. Practice has varied tremendously over time, across borders and by competitive level. Issues have arisen multiple times in the Olympic games and other high-profile sporting competitions, for example allegations that certain male athletes attempted to compete as women or that certain female athletes had intersex conditions perceived to give unfair advantage. The topic of sex verification is related to the more recent question of how to treat transgender people in sports. Sex verification is not typically conducted on athletes competing in the male category because there is generally no perceived competitive advantage for a female or intersex athlete to compete in male categories.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport is an international body established in 1984 to settle disputes related to sport through arbitration. Its headquarters are in Lausanne, Switzerland and its courts are located in New York City, Sydney, and Lausanne. Temporary courts are established in current Olympic host cities.
Santhi Soundarajan is a track and field athlete from Tamil Nadu, India. She is the winner of 12 international medals for India and around 50 medals for her home state of Tamil Nadu. Shanthi Soundarajan is the first Tamil woman to win a medal at the Asian Games. She competes in middle distance track events. She was stripped of a silver medal won at the 2006 Asian Games after failing a sex verification test which disputed her eligibility to participate in the women's competition.
Mokgadi Caster Semenya OIB is a South African middle-distance runner and winner of two Olympic gold medals and three World Championships in the women's 800 metres. She first won gold at the World Championships in 2009 and went on to win at the 2016 Olympics and the 2017 World Championships, where she also won a bronze medal in the 1500 metres. After the doping disqualification of Mariya Savinova, she was also awarded gold medals for the 2011 World Championships and the 2012 Olympics.
Pinki Pramanik is an Indian track and field athlete who specialises in the 400 metres and 800 metres. Pramanik had success with the national 4×400 metres relay team, winning silver at the 2006 Commonwealth Games, gold at the 2006 Asian Games, and gold at the 2005 Asian Indoor Games. She won three gold medals at the 2006 South Asian Games, winning the 400 and 800 m events, as well as the relay.
Srabani Nanda is an Indian woman sprint runner athlete from Odisha specialized in 4x100m relay, 100 metre and 200 metre sprint events. She belongs to Kandhamal District of Odisha. She trains in Kingston, Jamaica with MVP Track & Field Club under coach Stephen Francis.
In India, the sport of athletics was introduced during the period of the British Raj. The sport is governed at national level by the Athletics Federation of India, which was formed in 1946. Despite its large population, few Indian athletes have won a medal in a global or major championship. This began to change in the 21st century, when Indians started taking greater interest in athletics more generally and improved facilities for the sport began to be built at a local level. At a continental level, it has been among the more successful Asian nations, though some distance behind China and Japan.
Lynsey Sharp is a former Scottish track and field athlete who competed in the 800 metres. She is the 2012 European champion and represented Great Britain at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. She won a silver medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Her personal best is 1:57.69, the seventh fastest time over 800m by a British woman, set in the final of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
Melissa Bishop-Nriagu is a Canadian runner who specializes in the 800 metres. She competed at the 2012, 2016 Olympics and 2020 Olympics. She won a silver medal at the 2015 World Athletics Championships. Her World Championship medal was a Canadian woman's first-ever medal in the 800 m. Bishop-Nriagu graduated from University of Windsor and was only the third Canadian woman to achieve a time under 2:00 minutes in the 800 m. She is currently the national record holder for this distance.
Francine Niyonsaba is a Burundian runner who specialized in the 800 metres and shifted to longer distances in 2019. She was the 2016 Rio Olympics silver medalist in the women's 800 metres. Her silver medal was the first Olympic medal for Burundi since 1996. Niyonsaba won a silver in the event at the 2017 World Championships.
Katrina Alicia Karkazis is an American anthropologist and bioethicist. She is a professor of Sexuality, Women's and Gender Studies at Amherst College. She was previously the Carol Zicklin Endowed Chair in the Honors Academy at Brooklyn College, City University of New York and a senior research fellow with the Global Health Justice Partnership at Yale University. She has written widely on testosterone, intersex issues, sex verification in sports, treatment practices, policy and lived experiences, and the interface between medicine and society. In 2016, she was jointly awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship with Rebecca Jordan-Young.
The women's 800 metres event at the 2016 Summer Olympics took place between 17–20 August at the Olympic Stadium.
Maria José Martínez-Patiño is a Spanish former hurdler, whose dismissal from the Spanish Olympic team in 1986 for failing the gender test is a notable moment in the history of sex verification in sports.
Hiriyur Manjunath Jyothi is an Indian sprinter and Commonwealth games medalist. She competes in the 100 metres, 200 metres, and 4×100 metres relay categories. She is a national champion or former national champion in each of the three events, with personal best timings of 11.3, 23.42, and 43.42 seconds in the 100 metres, 200 metres, and 4×100 metres relay, respectively. Her personal best times in all three events were after her withdrawal from professional competition for three years to become a mother. A Canara Bank employee, Jyothi is married to the former sprinter S. Srinivas, who is also her personal coach. Despite wanting to win a medal at Asian games, she couldn’t continue sprint due to persistent achilles injury. She ended up her career in 2017 with a gold at the open nationals, Chennai.
The testosterone regulations in women's athletics are a series of policies first published in 2011 by the IAAF and last updated following a court victory against Caster Semenya in May 2019. The first version of the rules applied to all women with high testosterone, but the current version of the rules only apply to athletes with certain XY disorders of sexual development, and set a 5 nmol/L testosterone limit, which applies only to distances between 400 m and 1 mile (inclusive), other events being unrestricted.
Beatrice Masilingi is a Namibian sprinter. At the age of 18, she placed sixth in the 200 metres at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, having made the final along with fellow Namibian sprinter and eventual silver medallist Christine Mboma. Masilingi won silver medals in both the 100 metres and 200 m at the 2021 World Under-20 Championships.
Christine Mboma is a Namibian sprinter who competes in the 100 metres and 200 m. At the age of 18, she won a silver medal in the 200 metres at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, becoming the first ever Namibian woman to win a women's Olympic medal and breaking the world under-20 and African senior record. Mboma also won the event at the 2021 World Under-20 Championships and Diamond League final, improving her record mark to 21.78 seconds.
Dhanalakshmi Sekar is an Indian athlete from Tamil Nadu. She rose to limelight after beating veteran Indian sprinters Dutee Chand and Hima Das in the 200m event at the 2021 Federation Cup. She made her debut appearance at the Olympics representing India at the 2020 Summer Olympics. She was banned for a period of 3 years for failing a doping test in May 2022.
On 9 October 2001, Pratima Gaonkar, a young Indian intersex athlete and swimmer, was found dead in a well in Goa. The cause was identified as death by suicide; this was in turn was caused by Gaonkar's reaction to the disclosure and public commentary surrounding a failed sex verification test. Gaonkar was reportedly the subject of blackmail attempts, including an accusation by her mother that her coach was accusing her.
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