Cut From Yahoo News:
LAUSANNE, Switzerland - Transsexuals were cleared Monday to compete in the Olympics for the first time.
Under a proposal approved by the IOC executive board, athletes who have undergone sex-change surgery will be eligible for the Olympics if their new gender has been legally recognized and they have gone through a minimum two-year period of postoperative hormone therapy.
The decision, which covers both male-to-female and female-to-male cases, goes into effect starting with the Athens Olympics in August.
The IOC had put off a decision in February, saying more time was needed to consider all the medical issues.
Some members had been concerned whether male-to-female transsexuals would have physical advantages competing against women.
Men have higher levels of testosterone and greater muscle-to-fat ratio and heart and lung capacity. However, doctors say, testosterone levels and muscle mass drop after hormone therapy and sex-change surgery.
IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said the situation of transsexuals competing in high-level sports was "rare but becoming more common."
IOC medical director Patrick Schamasch said no specific sports had been singled out by the ruling.
"Any sport may be touched by this problem," he said. "Until now, we didn't have any rules or regulations. We needed to establish some sort of policy."
Until 1999, the IOC conducted gender verification tests at the Olympics but the screenings were dropped before the 2000 Sydney Games.
One of the best known cases of transsexuals in sports involves Renee Richards, formerly Richard Raskind, who played on the women's tennis tour in the 1970s.
In March, Australia's Mianne Bagger became the first transsexual to play in a pro golf tournament.
Michelle Dumaresq, formerly Michael, has competed in mountain bike racing for Canada.
Richards, now a New York opthamologist, was surprised by the IOC decision and was against it. She said decisions on transsexuals should be made on an individual basis.
"Basically, I think they're making a wrong judgment here, although I would have loved to have that judgment made in my case in 1976," she said.
"They're probably looking for trouble down the line. There may be a true transsexual — not someone who's nuts and wants to make money — who will be a very good champion player, and it will be a young person, let's say a Jimmy Connors or a Tiger Woods, and then they'll have an unequal playing field.
"In some sports, the physical superiority of men over women is very significant."
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Former Member
Ok, I'll bite here....if competition is so unfair and disingenuous, what is your ideal vision of competition?
Disregarding that I never called competition disingenuous (I did call certain arguments about competition that I found self-contradictory disingenuous) and that the only sense in which I called competition unfair was in the sense that not all the competitors come to the competition with equal physical gifts (e.g. the top male swimmers are bigger and stronger than the top female swimmers), I think that masters swimming has achieved a reasonable model of competition.
Despite the general ridicule that is aimed at anyone suggesting that competition is more fair when the competitors are more evenly matched (unless the distinction is male vs. female) I think that the way masters meets divide results by age group is a good thing, even in spite of the fact that there is no clear differentiation of ability in the middle age groups in many events. I particulary approve of the way competitions are organized by seed time, especially when people enter real times as their seed times.
Truth is, I don't view competition as an end in itself but a means to an end. In the case of the Olympics I think the goal is to encourage people to push to the limits of human ability and thereby provide inspiration to the rest of us. In the case of Masters swimming I think there is more emphasis on participation and personal best. Probably as a result of the fact that I am a mediocre swimmer in the big scheme of things I use competitions primarily as a motivational tool and a context for setting personal bests rather than wins. If the person in the next lane is a little bit faster that tends to help me push a little harder so my ideal competition is among people of similar speed, regardless of sex or age. I therefore prefer meets that seed strictly by time without regard for sex or age but I recognize that some people derive extra motivation by winning their heat in the process of winning their age/sex catagory so it is all good in my books.
Ok, I'll bite here....if competition is so unfair and disingenuous, what is your ideal vision of competition?
Disregarding that I never called competition disingenuous (I did call certain arguments about competition that I found self-contradictory disingenuous) and that the only sense in which I called competition unfair was in the sense that not all the competitors come to the competition with equal physical gifts (e.g. the top male swimmers are bigger and stronger than the top female swimmers), I think that masters swimming has achieved a reasonable model of competition.
Despite the general ridicule that is aimed at anyone suggesting that competition is more fair when the competitors are more evenly matched (unless the distinction is male vs. female) I think that the way masters meets divide results by age group is a good thing, even in spite of the fact that there is no clear differentiation of ability in the middle age groups in many events. I particulary approve of the way competitions are organized by seed time, especially when people enter real times as their seed times.
Truth is, I don't view competition as an end in itself but a means to an end. In the case of the Olympics I think the goal is to encourage people to push to the limits of human ability and thereby provide inspiration to the rest of us. In the case of Masters swimming I think there is more emphasis on participation and personal best. Probably as a result of the fact that I am a mediocre swimmer in the big scheme of things I use competitions primarily as a motivational tool and a context for setting personal bests rather than wins. If the person in the next lane is a little bit faster that tends to help me push a little harder so my ideal competition is among people of similar speed, regardless of sex or age. I therefore prefer meets that seed strictly by time without regard for sex or age but I recognize that some people derive extra motivation by winning their heat in the process of winning their age/sex catagory so it is all good in my books.
