World Athletics is set to introduce cheek swabbing tests to establish whether an athlete should be eligible to compete in its female competitions, its president, Lord Sebastian Coe, said Tuesday.
The global governing body for track and field has not yet clarified when the proposed assessments will become mandatory, but Coe says doing so is designed to maintain the “integrity of competition.”
The major international event on the track and field calendar this year is September’s World Championships in Japan.
Gender testing has become a hot-button issue throughout sports in recent years. At last summer’s Paris Olympics, the women’s boxing competition was largely overshadowed by questions surrounding the eligibility of Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan. Both women won gold medals.
The issue was a central policy of Coe’s campaign to become the next International Olympic Committee (IOC) president. Kirsty Coventry, who took a similar stance, won Thursday’s election and will succeed Thomas Bach as head of the IOC later this year.
“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,” Coe said…
