27 Jun 2018

The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) has emphasised the need to come up with a fair solution for athletes with Differences of Sexual Development (DSD).

That followed a meeting between IAAF president, Sebastian Coe and Athletics South Africa (ASA) president, Aleck Skhosana in London, United Kingdom on June 26, where the two discussed their position on the IAAF’s new eligibility regulations for female classification.

A press release from IAAF says during the meeting, Skhosana stressed that the federation and the South African Department of Sport and Recreation and SASCOC had a duty to protect all athletes, including female athletes who may fall foul of the new regulations.

Skhosana also confirmed that while they had been engaging IAAF on the matter since May 10 this year, further consultation on the development of such regulations would have been ideal.

However, he highlighted that they would continue to support their athletes on the grounds that the regulations discriminated against certain female athletes on the basis of natural physical characteristics and/or sex.

On the other hand, Coe, explained that the regulations did not target any individual athlete when they were crafted.

The IAAF boss added that the international federation for athletics and its affiliates needed to ensure that sport was as inclusive as possible.

Further, Coe said the international federation had a responsibility to ensure fair and meaningful competition for all of its athletes, to reward them for the commitment and sacrifice required to excel in the sport and further inspire new generations to join the sport and aspire to the same excellence.

“To do this, we need to create competition categories within our sport that ensures that success is determined by talent, dedication and hard work, rather than by other factors that are not considered fair or meaningful, such as the enormous physical advantages that an adult has over a child or a male athlete has over a female athlete,” he said.

Further, the release says the IAAF has stressed need to come up with a fair solution for intersex/DSD athletes wishing to compete in the female category as set out in the new regulations.

Such,would be based on the evidence the IAAF has gathered about the degree of performance benefit that such athletes get from their higher levels of circulating testosterone. ENDS