by The International Olympic Committee has been accused of sinking to new heights after funding research into transgender athletes who claim they are at a physical disadvantage compared to biological women.
The research paper, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, reported that physically active transgender women performed worse in certain cardiovascular tests and had less physical strength than cisgender women. Researchers at the University of Brighton also found that, contrary to previous claims, transgender women had the same bone density as cisgender females, which has links to muscle strength.
The results, published on Thursday morning, could have a significant impact on the debate about gender inclusion in sport ahead of the Olympic Games in Paris as it was the first research on the issue funded by the IOC and the first scientific study of “athletes” who underwent gender-affirming hormone therapy.
The authors, who included a member of the IOC’s medical and scientific commission, said their findings showed sports federations should caution against banning transgender women from the female category without further research into their individual sports.
“While longitudinal transfer studies of transgender athletes are urgently needed, these findings should be weighed against precautionary bans and exclusions of sports eligibility that are not based on sport-specific (or sport-related) research, ” said the paper in its conclusions.
Women do not jump high
The study collected data from 69 volunteers, who responded to advertisements on social media seeking research participants. The cohort included 19 transgender women, 20 cisgender women, 19 cisgender men and 11 transgender men. To qualify for the study, they had to be participating in competitive sport or physical training at least three times a week, and the transgender volunteers had to have undergone hormone therapy for at least a year. None of the subjects had competed in national or international sport.
Researchers found that transgender women performed worse than cisgender women in the countermovement jump that tests lower body strength. It involves jumping vertically with hands on hips. The average height of transgender women was 36.4cm with a standard deviation (SD) of 7.9cm. The mean height of cisgender women was 40.7cm with a SD of 5.8cm.
Cisgender women also performed worse in an important test of lung function called the FEV1/FVC ratio, which compares subjects’ Forced Expiratory Volume (the maximum amount of air expelled in the first second after a deep inhalation) with their Forced Vital Capacity (volume of air that can be exhaled after a deep inhalation and measurement of lung size). He added that there was no significant difference between the two groups’ hemoglobin profiles and bone density – both of which are linked to athletic performance – although, the researchers noted, previous studies of sedentary subjects had found that women fared better. transgender in both groups.
‘Unfair comparisons’
The findings prompted a strong backlash from women’s sports campaigners, who described the research as unreliable and “like giving someone exam answers”.
Dr Ross Tucker, a sports scientist and high performance sports expert currently working as a research scientist for World Rugby, questioned how reliable it is to compare groups of women and transgender women from such a small pool with different fitness levels at them.
“I have to say, I think it’s a bad study, and it’s amazing that anyone is describing it as a ‘significant study’,” Dr Tucker told Telegraph Sport. “This study is a comparison, one moment in time, between transgender women and a group of female athletes, and then they’re using it because it gives us insight into what happens when someone exceeds testosterone.
“When I first read it, it made me think that the IOC and their researchers haven’t been able to find enough transgender athletes to study over time, so instead, they’ve just accepted with whatever they could find, and then compare them to a group. whatever females they could find, and tried to present it as a valid comparison.”
Dr Tucker explained that the pool of transgender women’s V02max (the maximum level of oxygen a body can use during exercise) put them in the “mid-range of untrained or moderately trained adults”, while the female group in “significant”. a higher category of training status”.
“One of those groups would be described as overweight, and the other athletic,” Dr Tucker added. “The transgender women have a body fat percentage of 31.6 percent, and the females 26.6 percent.
“These demographic characteristics should already give us pause – these groups may not be comparable for reasons that really matter. We have a group of females who are on the higher end of the cardiovascular capacity along the female spectrum, and a group of transgender women in the middle of that range, even the lower end of it. One group is overweight, the other is not.
“I wouldn’t be comparing these groups expecting the comparison to be similar. The females are fit and well educated, while the transgender women are far below the same standard. Their physiological abilities suggest that they are not trained.”
Professor Yannis Pitsiladis, who led the research and sits on the IOC’s medical and scientific commission, said such inconsistencies should prevent anyone from seeing the two groups as synonymous when they face off on the issue of gender inclusion.
‘Trying to defend an obscene position’
Sharron Davies, the former British swimmer who was cheated out of a gold medal at the 1980 Olympics after East Germany’s Petra Schneider was admitted doping her way to first place, took direct aim at the IOC.
“The IOC, as far as I’m concerned, cannot be any lower than they are. They are just unbelievable,” Davies told Telegraph Sport. “They are the people who want to defend their obscene position, which has been terrible since 2015.
“I don’t believe you can turn around and ask a trans athlete who will benefit if he’s not performing in trials to do his own testing. That’s crazy. That’s like giving someone answers to an exam. It’s stupid, isn’t it?
“That’s exactly what happened with the Emily Bridges stuff up in Loughborough. Emily Bridges [a transgender women’s cyclist] trying to prove that Emily Bridges has lost power so that Emily Bridges can give women a race. That’s crazy.
“All the other studies we have – all 19 of them – are over longer periods of time with people who had nothing to gain by sustaining the results.”
Bridges, who set the junior men’s national record over 25 miles in 2018 before undergoing hormone therapy in 2021 to reduce his testosterone levels, was one of those affected by British Cycling’s decision last July to ban puts transgender athletes from women´s events. Athletics and swimming are among those who have done the same.
But the IOC currently allows individual sports federations to designate their own rules regarding transgender inclusion for the Olympics.
Fiona McAnena, campaign director at human rights charity Sex Matters, said: “It is disappointing that the IOC is still looking at how to allow men to access women’s sport when only women can disadvantaged, who already receive less funding and less access to sport. .
“Some trans-identified males have been asked to prove that they cannot jump very high or blow into a tube for a long time. Why would they try their best when they put in less effort which affects women’s sport? The objective measures such as height and weight show a male advantage. But even if these men have lost some strength over time, that is not a license to compete in women’s events and take women’s places.”
Mara Yamauchi, the third fastest British female in the history of the Olympic marathon, said: “This study has many problems, including self-selection of participants, a large variation in the ages of the participants, and it has no control over the hormone treatment of its participants transgender. Rather than funding research like this, and making nonsense claims like ‘no presumption of advantage’, the IOC could simply look at its own archives to know that males as a sex class have huge physical advantages compared to females as a sex class. .
“Therefore, males do not belong to the category of females under any circumstances.”
Telegraph Sport has contacted the IOC for a response.
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