Olympics and Genetic Disorders

Disorders of Sexual Development (DSD) appear to affect roughly 1 in 5000 births, or 0.018% of births. 

Two dozen U.S. boys under 17 swim faster than Katie Ledecky in her best event.

DSD certainly does affect athletic performance. Olympic testing has shown Olympic athletes are much more likely to have a DSD than is the general population:  

All women were screened in Olympic competition from 1992 onwards, with over 2000 tests performed at the 1992 Barcelona games. Fifteen tests were reported positive, with a further eight out of over 3000 positive tests at the Atlanta games in 1996.

1 in 5000 births only works out to 0.018% of births, but if the 1992 Olympics tested positive 15 of 2000, that is 0.75%, which means, in 1992, DSDs were 41 times more common among female Olympic athletes than expected. Similarly, 8 of 3000 positive tests in the 1996 Olympic means 0.266% positive, or a DSD rate nearly 15 times more common than expected. That's way, way above normal distribution. 

The incidence can create enormous disparities in women's sports. For instance:

Here are a few recent examples just from Olympic podiums in track and field: In Tokyo in 2021, an XY DSD sprinter took silver in the women’s 200 meters. In Rio de Janeiro in 2016, three XY DSD athletes swept the women’s 800-meter podium. In London in 2012, the same athlete who won gold in Rio rose from silver to gold after the winner was caught doping.

Some might claim that androgen insensitivity and similar DSDs confer no special advantage, but the numbers tell us this is not true. 

Clearly, if DSD conferred no advantage, there would not be an enormously disproportionate number of DSD athletes competing in the women's Olympics. The fact that the numbers clearly demonstrate this disproportion also demonstrates that someone isn't telling the truth about DSDs and their effect on women's sports competitions. 

Apparently, the Olympics is now much more about the athletics of genetic disorders than it is about female athletics. It's sad that the Olympics allowed this to happen.

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