25-March-2025.
World Athletics has approved the introduction of cheek swabbing to determine an athlete’s gender with the organisation’s president Sebastian Coe saying the decision was taken to “doggedly” protect the female category.
World Athletics has announced a groundbreaking measure to protect the integrity of women’s sports by introducing mandatory biological sex verification for all athletes entering female competitions.
Sebastian Coe, president of the governing body, revealed after a World Athletics Council meeting that they plan to implement non-invasive testing methods—either cheek swabs or dry blood tests—that would only need to be conducted once in an athlete’s career.
“This we feel is a really important way of providing confidence and maintaining that absolute focus on the integrity of competition,” Lord Coe explained, emphasising the straightforward and clear nature of the process.
The verification tests aim to determine if competitors have transitioned to female after experiencing male puberty or if they have differences in sex development that could provide testosterone-related advantages in competition.
It is the latest move overseen by Sebastian Coe – as president of the governing body . . .
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