How in 1938 the secret of the female athlete who turned out to be a man was revealed, and other gender scandals in sports

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

There are enough scandals in the world of sports: doping, correct refereeing, money manipulation and many other issues can shake the belief that the stadium is a territory of fair competition and comradeship. There is one more problem, more rare, which, nevertheless, has arisen more and more lately - this is the issue of gender identification of athletes. Modern medicine is sometimes forced to admit that the issue of gender is not as simple as we recently thought, and that people cannot always be divided on this basis into two clearly defined groups.

On September 21, 1938, Dora Ratjen, a 19-year-old athlete who had just won another gold medal in high jump, boarded a train from Vienna to Cologne. Upon arrival, a policeman approached her on the platform to check her documents - the conductor in the carriage noticed the girl's hairy arms and announced the disguised man. This situation might seem absurd if the medical examination did not reveal male genitals in the Olympic athlete and European champion. Interestingly, Dora herself was even delighted with the exposure, since the existence in a woman's guise bore her more and more. However, there was no talk of fraud in this case, because from the birth of a boy, whose sexual characteristics were not clearly expressed, he was brought up as a girl. Now Dora happily turned into Henry according to the documents, and then this unusual man lived like a man.

Most of all, Ratien's father opposed the formal change of sex. He explained to the inspectors that at birth, he and his mother could not figure out the sex of the child, but the midwife told them that it was a girl, and the family raised her like that. Heinrich himself said that he realized a mistake at the age of 10-12, but did not ask his parents why he wears dresses and braids his braids. Today, such cases are being thoroughly investigated, and on a new round of tolerance, the question is even being discussed - whether parents have the right to consent to corrective operations that will lead the visible signs of an inter-child to one area - male or female. However, at the beginning of the 20th century, such children, at best, could carefully hide their "features" so as not to become outcasts.

Interestingly, for the first time, gender testing of athletes began to be carried out at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. However, it is possible that then only women who aroused suspicion were checked, since it was at these games that Dora Ratjen took fourth place in high jump. But checking the gender of the American runner Helen Stevens, who won gold in the 100-meter race, showed that this is a real woman. Doubts arose because of her incredible result, because the runner unexpectedly for everyone bypassed the legendary favorite - the Polish athlete Stanislava Valasevich, a multiple world champion. The irony of the situation was that in 1980, after the death of the famous polka, it turned out that she was an inter. Until the end of his life, no one had any doubts about this issue, and an autopsy was started only because of the circumstances of the death - the athlete was shot by robbers in the store when she, apparently, tried to detain them. Valasevich's parents and her ex-husband, with whom she lived for over a year, declined to comment on this.

In 1966, during the European Athletics Championships in Budapest, gender testing became mandatory for all athletes. After the introduction of this rule, the famous Soviet athletes, sisters Tamara and Irina Press, unexpectedly abandoned the competition. Journalists have long hinted that things are not all right with the girls, they soared very brightly to the sports Olympus, winning gold at the 1960 and 1964 Olympics. day has not been received.

Beginning in 1968, in addition to the usual examination, gender expertise began to investigate the genetics of athletes, and it was then that surprises fell like a cornucopia, because some people, having all the external signs of women, may have a set of male sex chromosomes. As a result, the world champion in alpine skiing Erika Schinegger turned into Erika after being disqualified; Dutch athlete Dillem Fouquier, whom even the family considered a full-fledged woman, was virtually expelled from the sport; Spanish athlete Maria Jose Martinez-Patiño was disqualified from the Spanish Olympic team in 1986 for failing a gender test. True, further researchers, it seems, themselves got confused in the question of who can be considered a woman, and who, even with a stretch, cannot.

In total, about two dozen different genotype variations are known. Some of them are not so rare (there are 1 in 1000), others are described only a few times in the entire history of medicine. By 1999, it turned out that the issue was so complex and multifaceted that chromosomal tests were canceled. It turned out that everyone is safer to ignore the problem of inter-athletes than to spend huge sums on tests that do not give an unambiguous answer to the question.

A new scandal erupted in 2009 when it became clear that not everything is in order with the two-time Olympic champion Kaster Semenya. The exclusivity of the athlete's achievements prompted the International Association of Athletics Federations to conduct an investigation, which raised the question of her real gender. It turned out that she, in principle, is more of a woman, but she naturally has a high level of male hormones. In this regard, they even came up with a new rule that such athletes can take part in competitions, but they need to lower their testosterone levels. So today there are more questions with the gender identification of Olympians than answers, especially since a new type of athletes is on the way - men who have undergone gender reassignment surgery.

Back in 1976, this issue was not resolved in favor of the athlete - tennis player Renee Richards, born a man, was not allowed to participate in the US Women's Open tournament, however, in the new millennium, the rules began to change, and in 2004 Australian golfer Mianne Bagger already participated in Australian Open for Women. Today there is even discussion about whether "biological women" need to worry, who may soon be pushed out of the sport.

Finishing a sports career, many cannot find a place in the world without competition. Someone becomes a coach, someone becomes an administrator in sports, but there are examples of famous athletes who have become successful politicians