World Athletics to require cheek swab tests for athletes in female track events

• World Athletics has introduced cheek-swab tests to verify the eligibility of athletes competing in the female category. The timeline for implementation is still unknown.
• President Sebastian Coe emphasized the importance of protecting the integrity of women’s sports and vowed to defend the female category.
• The test will detect the SRY gene, a key determinant of male-typical sex development, through a cheek swab or blood sample.

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World Athletics on Tuesday, March 25, approved the implementation of cheek-swab tests to verify if an athlete is female as part of efforts to maintain the integrity of women’s sports, according to the organization’s president, Sebastian Coe. Coe reaffirmed the organization’s commitment to protecting the female category in athletics.

“It’s important to do it because it maintains everything that we’ve been talking about and particularly recently about –– not just talking about –– the integrity of female women’s sport but actually guaranteeing it. And this, we feel, is a really important way of providing confidence and maintaining absolute focus on integrity of competition.”

Sebastian Coe, World Athletics President

Coe emphasized that pre-clearance testing would be required for athletes who wish to compete in the female category. He described the process as “very straightforward” and emphasized its significance.

“Neither of these are invasive. They are necessary, and they will be done to absolutely international medical standards,” Coe said during a media briefing. “I wouldn’t have set off down this path in 2016, 2017, to protect the female category in sport if I’d been anything other than prepared to take the challenge head-on.”

Cheek-swab test to detect SRY gene

The newly introduced test will look for the SRY gene, which is located on the Y chromosome and plays a crucial role in male-typical sex development.

According to World Athletics officials, the test will be conducted via a cheek swab, with a dry blood sample as a possible alternative. The SRY gene is responsible for producing a protein involved in sex determination, typically associated with male development.

Paris Olympics led to some calls for gender testing

Gender testing has been a contentious issue in sports, with recent controversies surrounding the eligibility of athletes like Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan, both of whom won gold medals in female events at the Paris Olympics.

Khelif and Yu-ting were accused of failing a gender test administered by the International Boxing Association (IBA), formerly known as the International Boxing Federation. However, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) denounced the IBF’s tests as “not legitimate.”

“The whole process is flawed. From the conception of the test, to how the test was shared with us, to how the tests have become public, is so flawed that it’s impossible to engage with it,” said IOC spokesperson Mark Adams.

In 2023, the IOC stripped the IBA of its role as an Olympic governing body due to its ties to a Russian state energy firm and its way of judging fights.

The topic of transgender women competing in women’s sports featured prominently in Coe’s campaign for the presidency of the IOC. Kirsty Coventry shared his position, who ultimately won the election to succeed Thomas Bach as IOC president.