Christine Mboma wins Diamond League 200m

The 5 mmol/l is the level it must be under to compete in female competition.

Oops, getting my thresholds slightly muddled. But IAAF's documents used 7.7 as the lower male bound.

But still, there's no reason to suspect Mboma's testosterone is not in normal male levels. Lower-than-normal testosterone levels is not a symptom of 5-ARD, and if they were naturally low, getting down to 5 nmol/l would not be a big deal for them.

Mboma has been barred from competing in the DSD-restricted events, which means testosterone level of 5nmol/l or higher, which is within normal male range

No, normal male is about 9-30 nmol/l.

The 5 mmol/l is the level it must be under to compete in female competition.

What a disaster. So many women aiming to be the best at their sport, looking at these results seeing that there is a barrier in the way that they can never overcome. While Caster Semenya was the most visible, the 800m podium in Rio was occupied by three runners with XY chromosomes and the rulings restricting their access to the 800m and 1500m events has simply permitted these young athletes to compete in the shorter and longer distances.

Bye bye female records... we will gradually blur the lines, erase the evidence, silence the questions and move quietly on to a different world where sex is no longer the determining factor as to who enters the competitions and the face of female athletics will change forever.

I can’t find that mboma’s testosterone results have been published. Do you have a link?

Mboma has been barred from competing in the DSD-restricted events, which means testosterone level of 5nmol/l or higher, which is within normal male range.

So we're more certain of Mboma having normal male testosterone levels than any of the men in the men's events.

Yes, of course, the testosterone will be in the normal male range. On account of the presence of testes

I can’t find that mboma’s testosterone results have been published. Do you have a link?

Running is their life. It's their ticket out of poverty…

Yes - it's a ticket out of poverty that is now being denied to women who would otherwise be competitive in this class. It's denying the rightful earnings and sponsorships to those women and it has an unquantifiable impact on the ambitions of young women for whom this would otherwise be an avenue.

Many people misunderstand the issues people with DSDs have with their assigned sex, especially for conditions typically missed at birth in developing countries but typically identified at birth in developed ones.

Agreed. I don't recall the number of people born with DSDs for whom there is any degree of ambiguity but it is very small:

we have to drill down into what the meaning of the word “intersex” is. Most people think of hermaphrodites. Let’s stress at the beginning, there has been no example ever of a human being with both sets of working reproductive organs. There is a very tiny percentage of people who are born with both testicular and ovarian tissue (what Fausto-Sterling calls “true hermaphrodites”). And when I say tiny, we’re talking intersex tiny, as in 0.0117/1,000 livebirths, or one in 100,000. These are very complex cases, but still not actual hermaphrodites. [cont.]

Claire G covers CAIS and other relevant topics.

mrkhvoice.com/index.php/2019/05/12/statistics-and-semantics-is-intersex-as-common-as-red-heads/

None of the above means they should be allowed to continue competing in women's sports after their condition is diagnosed.

And that responsibility falls to the national sports bodies. They say no to athletes all the time. They need to say no now.

Sums it up so well.

Mboma is only 18 now, so has been raising their younger sisters since the age of 13. It's not surprising that success in the Diamond League would be seen as salvation for the whole family. Anyone of that age and with that background is unlikely to be aware of the bigger picture, or even to have understood that they were not just a girl who happened to be very very good at running.

The Namibian sports authorities understood though. They have cynically exploited this young person. I feel desperately sorry for Christine Mboma.

I agree BoreOfWhabylon. I watched a whole range of interviews given by these young athletes talking about their experiences, with a focus on what happened after the Caster story broke.

A common thread is that they were getting tested by their national athletics bodies, but not told why. They had no understanding of the medical issues or the unfairness issues. (To be fair, the level of schooling of the athletes I watched being interviewed would make that difficult.)

One said she didn't really mind or care about the testing (at 17), as long as they let her keep running. Running is their life. It's their ticket out of poverty. From their perspective, this is all deeply unfair and there's shame involved, too, in having their medical conditions publicly debated.

They also suffer from being tarred with the same brush as Caster, who was reportedly not raised as a girl (or at least now seems to prefer presenting in a masculine way).

Many people misunderstand the issues people with DSDs have with their assigned sex, especially for conditions typically missed at birth in developing countries but typically identified at birth in developed ones. Thanks to the concerted efforts of trans rights activists, they now equate the experience of someone with a DSD who was assigned one sex at birth who then goes on to find that assignment does not fit them with the self-identification of someone who is unequivocally male or female who nonetheless wishes to be seen as the other sex.

So they look at Caster and see someone self-identifying into female sports, who otherwise presents and behaves as male and think this is the same issue.

It's not and Caster isn't lying but struggling with living with a DSD. And it's unfair, too, to assume that all of the athletes with that DSD are like Caster. Many of them continue to present and "live as" women.

None of the above means they should be allowed to continue competing in women's sports after their condition is diagnosed.

And that responsibility falls to the national sports bodies. They say no to athletes all the time. They need to say no now.

Mboma also intends to try the 100m races in 1-2 years, in addition to the 200m.
By the next Olympics they could be taking gold in both events.

As far as I’m aware, all athletes are tested for the usual banned substances. Testosterone is a banned substance so will be flagged up in the tests taken from female athletes. At that point the athlete in question will be either be chromosomally tested to figure out if the T levels is high or will be charged with doping if they’ve been using T as a performance enhancing drug.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn thatnsome countries were actively scouting for them.

Francine Niyonsaba only just swithced to longer events this year. At the Olympics she was disqualified in the 5,000m heats for a lane infringement and finished 5th in the 10,000m. Since then she has won several races against top class opposition, running the second fastest time ever by a woman at two-miles, the fifth fastest ever at 3,000m and the 16th fastest ever at 5,000m. Given that Niyonsaba is still improving we can expect to her winning many more races.

Of course, if things were different she - and others - would have been in the 800m in Tokyo and we wouldn't be celebrating the amazing achievement of Keeley Hodginkson.

Out of curiosity, what is it that triggers an athlete being tested for DSD/VSD? Does it happen routinely to anyone who wants to compete at a certain level, or does it get flagged up if an individual’s performance seems to be outstripping their peers to the extent that natural talent isn’t enough of an explanation?

It’s grossly unfair and unfairly sanctioned by the sports authorities.

The women’s category should be single sex.

I'm not disagreeing Necessary. I'm just saving my ire for the sporting organisations.

It's not surprising that success in the Diamond League would be seen as salvation for the whole family.

Yes, I can imagine it would mean a lot to them.

But then it would also mean a lot to thousands of actual women in similar situations who would have to compete fairly to do the same thing.

If you're "nice" to Mbomba, you're potentially dashing the hopes of thousands of similar families - no female child could dream of making money for their family as a sportswoman in a world where female sports are male-dominated.

But equally I think people like Christine Mbomba deserve an appropriate category to compete in.

There is a category for people who have experienced a male puberty. The male category is open to all comers who qualify in them for athletics and other sports, it's the female one that is contingent.

Jackson and Asher-Smith have been robbed, like Lesley Sharp and countless others before them. This keeps happening. Corrupt scouts are now actively searching for young people with DSDs because there are rich pickings to be made there.

They don't even have to be great athletes. Most teenage boys will easily beat elite women.

Mboma grew up in Shinyungwe, a village in the Kavango East region of Namibia, as the eldest of three daughters.[9] She was abandoned by her father as a baby, and her mother Patricia died in 2016 while giving birth, leaving Christine to take care of her younger siblings.[9] She took up athletics in 2017.[9] Wikipedia

Mboma is only 18 now, so has been raising their younger sisters since the age of 13. It's not surprising that success in the Diamond League would be seen as salvation for the whole family. Anyone of that age and with that background is unlikely to be aware of the bigger picture, or even to have understood that they were not just a girl who happened to be very very good at running.

The Namibian sports authorities understood though. They have cynically exploited this young person. I feel desperately sorry for Christine Mboma.

The bottom line is that no one who has been through male puberty should ever be allowed to compete in women's sports. If that hard and fast rule was applied it would prevent this exploitation of young boys with DSDs.

And here's Athletics Weekly's coverage:

Mboma, who had to step down to 200m due to World Athletics’ rules relating to naturally high testosterone levels in women, said: “It was my first Diamond League experience and to be able to win in such a strong field is great.

More gaslighting!!!

and

A few years ago Francine Niyonsaba would have looked to have run the 800m but now she is showing her future is in the longer distances.

Yes, because she's been TOLD she has to move to longer distances as she has a DSD!! She is biologically male!

FFS, what epically shit reporting.

I was watching the BBC coverage with my mouth hanging open at all the gaslighting going on. The commentator not once mentioning that the athletes were biologically male, just that they were 'subject to rulings over excess testosterone'. Expressing amazement that they were able to change distance and after only 4 races still beat female athletes who had been training for years for the 1500. It was shocking.

Men should not be allowed in women's athletics - at any distance.

Just to add, Mboma has only recently switched to 200m after becoming ineligible to run the 400m due to testosterone levels.

Mboma & Beatrice Masilingi, Namibia’s 2 DSD athletes, are both only 18 years old. If this isn’t resolved soon they have the potential to dominate women’s sport for years.