Athletes' gender
Created | Updated Jul 16, 2012
No feminist can deny that men are superior to women in one respect: their sheer physical size and strength. That is why there have to be separate events for men and women in all sports where physical power is a factor. This has left room for some plain and fancy Olympic cheating over the years.
Polish-born Stella Walsh was the first woman to do the 100 yards in under 11 seconds, in 1930. She lived in the USA, but represented Poland in the 1932 Games, where she won the gold medal in the 100 yards. Four years later, at the Berlin Olympics, she was narrowly beaten by Helen Stephens of the US. She was furious, accused Helen of being a man in disguise and insisted that she should be officially examined. When, many years later, Stella Walsh was accidentally killed in a bank holdup, the autopsy showed that she herself was a man and had never been anything else.
German high jumper Dora Ratjen, who came fourth in the 1936 Berlin Games, turned out to be Herman Ratjen and was banned from future competition – not a great loss to sport if three women could beat him! The strapping Press sisters of the Soviet Union, Tamara and Irinya, won 5 Olympic golds and set 26 world records between them, but as soon as gender testing was instituted, they disappeared from the athletics scene overnight without explanation.
With the advent of steroid drugs, there were female athletes who displayed some alarming male characteristics: when someone passed a comment about a hulking East German female swimmer’s deep voice, she growled: “I’m not here to sing!”
Chromosome testing was started in 1968 – before that, female athletes had to submit to a physical examination, which was extremely embarrassing and degrading. At the 1972 Munich Olympics, the only female athlete who did not have to undergo chromosome testing was Princess Anne.
Polish-born Stella Walsh was the first woman to do the 100 yards in under 11 seconds, in 1930. She lived in the USA, but represented Poland in the 1932 Games, where she won the gold medal in the 100 yards. Four years later, at the Berlin Olympics, she was narrowly beaten by Helen Stephens of the US. She was furious, accused Helen of being a man in disguise and insisted that she should be officially examined. When, many years later, Stella Walsh was accidentally killed in a bank holdup, the autopsy showed that she herself was a man and had never been anything else.
German high jumper Dora Ratjen, who came fourth in the 1936 Berlin Games, turned out to be Herman Ratjen and was banned from future competition – not a great loss to sport if three women could beat him! The strapping Press sisters of the Soviet Union, Tamara and Irinya, won 5 Olympic golds and set 26 world records between them, but as soon as gender testing was instituted, they disappeared from the athletics scene overnight without explanation.
With the advent of steroid drugs, there were female athletes who displayed some alarming male characteristics: when someone passed a comment about a hulking East German female swimmer’s deep voice, she growled: “I’m not here to sing!”
Chromosome testing was started in 1968 – before that, female athletes had to submit to a physical examination, which was extremely embarrassing and degrading. At the 1972 Munich Olympics, the only female athlete who did not have to undergo chromosome testing was Princess Anne.
