Science Vs - When the Olympics Wants You to Take Drugs

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

Since the beginning of women’s sports, there has been a struggle over who qualifies for the women’s category. So this week, we're sharing an episode of a new podcast we love, called Tested. Tested follows the unfolding story of elite female runners who have been told they can no longer race as women because of their biology. As they work toward the Olympics, they face hard choices: take drugs to lower their natural testosterone levels, give up their sport entirely, or fight. This episode asks: Would you alter your body for the chance to compete for a gold medal? You’ll meet runner Christine Mboma and hear about the difficult choice she faces.  Find more episodes of Tested at https://link.chtbl.com/XReiimtO Tested is from CBC, NPR’s Embedded, and Bucket of Eels. The show is written, reported, and hosted by Rose Eveleth. Editing by Alison MacAdam and Veronica Simmonds. Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman, Andrew Mambo, and Rhaina Cohen. Additional reporting, producing, and editing by Lisa Pollak. Sound design by Mitra Kaboli. Our production manager is Michael Kamel. Anna Ashitey is our digital producer. This series was mixed by Robert Rodriguez. Fact checking by Dania Suleman. Our intersex script consultant is Hans Lindahl. Archival research by Hillary Dann. Legal support from Beverly Davis. Mixed for Science Vs by Bobby Lord. Special thanks to Yeezir for letting us use his song Silent Hero, and Keith Houston, Amir Nakhjavani, and Damon Papadopoulos. French translation by Vanessa Nicolai. Special thanks also to CBC Licensing. Additional audio from World Athletics and Warner Brothers. At CBC, Chris Oke and Cesil Fernandes are Executive Producers, Tanya Springer is the Senior Manager, and Arif Noorani is the Director of CBC Podcasts. At NPR, Katie Simon is Supervising Editor for Embedded. Irene Noguchi is Executive Producer. NPR’s senior vice president for podcasting is Collin Campbell. We got legal support from Micah Ratner. And thanks to NPR’s Managing Editor for Standards and Practices, Tony Cavin. This series was created with support from a New America fellowship. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Our new season of Science Versus is going to be in your ears in just a few weeks. But today, we've got something really special for you. So with the Olympics in full swing, and oh my gosh, who else is obsessed with table tennis right now? Like some of those serves are just out of control. If you haven't, you got to check it out. But also, the athletics is kicking off today, which is why we are bringing you this story in particular. It's about an incredible sprinter. And I don't want to tell you too much.

This story comes from a new podcast called Tested, which is hosted by Rose Everleth. And even if you're not big on the Olympics, not big into sprinting, I think you're going to be into this story. The team at Science Versus, we just loved it I think you're going to be into this story. The team at Science Versus, we just loved it and we really wanted to share it with you. So I hope you love it too. Let's just jump in. After this quick break, you'll hear Tested, Episode 1, The Choice.

Coming right back. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the first move or not.

With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Sometimes the best way to begin a complicated story is to start with something very simple. So, a fable. It begins at the end of the 19th century, with a little French man with a very large mustache, named Pierre de Coubertin. De Coubertin was full of ideas and schemes, many of which didn't pan out, like his passion for a strange new sport, fencing, but on horseback. But eventually, after much persistence, one of his odd ideas caught hold. A reimagining of a glorious gathering of ancient Greece. Every four years, the most athletic men would travel from far and wide to celebrate what

made them men. Strength. Endurance. Power. It was the modern Olympics. But then, de Coubertin encountered a challenge. Women. They wanted to compete in the Games. But again and again, de Coubertin turned them away. What is the appeal of that, he said? Women competing in the Games would be impractical, uninteresting, ungainly, and I do not hesitate to add, improper. The Olympics were for men, and men alone. But eventually,

the women were impossible to ignore. and nearly a hundred years ago, the Coubertin and the members of his International Olympic Committee let women into the Games. But they did so with a very specific condition. A new category, just for women. Men over here, women over there, problem solved. When the men of the Olympics created a women's category, they did not, in fact, solve their problems. They only created new ones. Here's the thing. If you're going to insist on having men's sports and women's sports, you have to know who's who. You have to have a way of separating the sexes. The men thought this would be easy.

But almost immediately, some of the athletes who showed up to compete did not fit their notions of what a woman should be. They were too strong, too fast, too competitive. Some men questioned whether they were really women at all. Sports authorities have now spent the past century devising and revising rules, creating tests to tell the difference between men and women, tests that defy biology and don't really work. Over the years, thousands of women athletes have been asked to prove that they were women. And today, a new generation of elite female competitors is facing a similar challenge. With a new twist. They're being asked by sports authorities to do something many doctors don't even consider ethical. Manipulate their biology in order to compete as women.

From CBC and NPR's Embedded, this is Tested. I'm Rose Eveleth. Fair. This past January, I traveled to Namibia to meet an athlete named Christine Boma. In a lot of ways, she's a normal 21-year-old. Shy, funny, obsessed with her dogs. She's also one of the fastest women in the entire world. Even announcers seem extra excited watching her run.

Boma is charging, and Boma's coming very, very quickly. And she just gets it on the line. In Namibia, Christine is a superstar. Her face is absolutely everywhere on murals and posters and signs, the cover of magazines, T-shirts for sale on the street. She's even name-dropped in a song called Silent Hero by Yeezer, one of the hottest rappers in Namibia right now. Everything sunny, life getting sweet like honey. Christine Boma to the industry, I run it. They want to say that I got lucky. The girls didn't like me. Christine got this famous by becoming the first woman in Namibia

to ever win an Olympic medal. In 2021, she took the silver medal in the 200-meter dash, and she did it when she was just 18 years old. But I flew all the way from California to Namibia, not only because of that. I also went because Christine has become, in some ways, the latest and most prominent athlete to be told by sports authorities that she actually falls on the wrong side of the line, separating the men's and women's categories.

We'll get to that soon. But meeting Christine, you'd never really know that she has a hundred years of sports policy hanging over her head. Okay, where are we? We are currently in my hometown. Your hometown? Yeah. What is it like? I mean, to be here, I mean, feel home. I just feel, you know, just feel like I'm home.

Yeah. We're driving through Christine's hometown, a small village called Shingyongwe in the northernmost part of Namibia. It took us about eight hours to get here from the capital where she now lives. We grew up here, like next to the beautiful view of the Kavango River. So special and yeah. At one point, Christine takes me to a small beach along the Kavango River. There are kids playing in the water in their underwear while their parents lean against their cars and watch.

What can you tell me about Boma? She's a superhuman. Yeah. She's a superhuman. Hello. Can I ask you a question? Do you know Christine Boma? Is she famous around here? Yeah.

Yeah? She's so famous. Why is she famous? Because she's Boma. Did you watch when she won in the Olympics? Mm-hmm. What was that like? It was so fast.

So fast? Yeah. Do you want to meet Cristina Mboma? Yeah. She's right over there. But how can I go like this? Run like this. Run to her head.

Yeah. Do you want to come meet her? Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go.

Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Do you want to come meet her? Most of the people I met along the Kavango River remember Christine as a little girl, playing with her friends. It's surreal, they told me, to be watching her on the big stage, competing all over the world. It's something that really makes you feel, man, you belong to something. And everybody is proud. At a point, she's an inspiration to the young ones.

Growing up here in rural Namibia, Christine did not have big dreams of athletic superstardom. Her father abandoned the family when she was very young. And when she was just 13, her mother died during childbirth. She's forced to really grow up because then she has to care for her two younger siblings. In fact, she even says, when you talk to her, she says, they are my kids. She calls them my kids. This is Celestine Karony, a BBC Africa reporter who has been covering track and field for years. When I'm running, I feel good. I would said i feel good like when i was at the village when my mom passed on things changed like people that

love you when your mom was there they're like they now don't love you and you've lost friends that's why i was into sport like every time when I go and play netball and every time when I go and run, I just feel like I forgot about things people say to me or things that are happening to me. And running helped me a lot with stress and all this stuff, like depression, because I lost my mom when I was 13. Christine didn't really get serious about running until she met a coach named Henk Bota. Christine came to me by accident and somebody asked me whether I will look and see whether she can perform and my first thought was I don't think

she's going to make it. People were saying that I'm still small and skinny, that I was not able to run with the people in the winter. They said that? Yeah. But once they got onto the track, Hank realized that he, and everybody else, were wrong. After the first session of training, I said to my brother, actually, I said to him, this is something special. Pretty soon, Hank and Christine would make Namibian history. Tokyo, August 2021. Christine has managed to make it all the way to the 200-meter final at the Olympics. Here we go. The setting is ready for the final of the women's 200 meters.

And what an unbelievably deep field we have for this group of fleet-footed women. Making it to an Olympic final is always a huge deal. But making it to the 200-meter final in 2021 was extra impressive. Because in 2021, the 200 meters for women was absolutely stacked with talent. People like Marie-Josée Taloo, Gabby Thomas. Of course, you had the Jamaicans come out, and Shelly Ann Fraser-Price, you know, with her flaming hair. And everybody is just looking at,

oh, can Mommy Rocket get another, you know, gold medal? Celestine Koroni, the BBC Africa reporter, was at that final in Tokyo. And everybody's wondering, well, will it be Jamaicans and Americans? Will it be Jamaicans and another Caribbean? I will honestly say, coming into this final, I did not give Christine a chance. Amidst all these legends, nobody really thought much about Christine Boma, which, if we want to be generous, might be part of the reason so many announcers pronounce her name wrong.

I've heard Bamba, Mamba, Mbamba, but just so we're clear, her last name is Boma. Here's the other 18-year-old from Namibia, Christine Mbama. Christine wasn't the only Namibian in that race. Her teammate, Beatrice Masalingi, was there too. Henk was coaching both of them. The starting blocks in Tokyo were different than the ones they were used to.

Bigger and fancier, with built-in electronics to sense a false start. And so before the race, Henk gave both Namibians, Beatrice and Christine, one big piece of advice. I said to them,

please don't false start and maybe from my side it was also a rookie mistake I think they were so scared to do a false start that they were so slow out of the blocks that's my biggest fear like when coach said don't false start

I was more scared that was like I have to make sure that I must listen to the gun and I must not go first and all this stuff. First. And they're away in the opening bend. And Talou with her trademark start. Unlike Talou, Christine, terrified to false start,

gets out to a really slow beginning. Around the first turn, she's near the back of the pack, and it is not looking good. In fact, she isn't even mentioned in most of the race commentaries I've watched because she's not really a factor in the race for the first 80 meters. I wanted to give up. Then I saw that the finishing line was, like, calling me. In the last 60 meters, Christine passes Marie-Josée Talou of Ivory Coast,

Mujinga Kumbunji from Switzerland, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Price of Jamaica, and then finally, Gabby Thomas of the U.S. Here's Celestine again. At this point, I'm now, I'm standing up. I'm like, Christine is coming into contention. She's making ground, She's making ground. And I remember shaking. I was shaking.

Someone was sitting next to me. I don't remember who it was. I'm like, look, look, look. Christine is going to do it. Christine is going to make it. In the final seconds, Christine rockets past everyone except for one of the Jamaicans. Mbama, the 18-year-old from Namibia, will get the silver. I think she was just as shocked as we were. I was like, where did that come from? And the youngster from Namibia with a world junior record, 21.81, at every stage here in Tokyo.

She has upped the ante, but there was no one to challenge her. And I was so excited when I reached the finish line. I thought, like, I would not be second last or something like that. You really thought you were going to be second last? Yeah. At that moment, almost everybody who's of African descent or who's African in that stadium was Namibian. After the finish, Christine runs to the stands and grabs her coach, Hank, for a huge hug.

She whispered in my ears and she said to me, coach, I'm the boss. And yes, it was just a wonderful moment. I'm the boss. I love that. That is a motivation. She will go down if she's scared or she's got nerves. She'll just tell herself, I'm the boss. I love that. That is the motivation. She will go down if she's scared or she's got nerves. She'll just tell herself, I'm the boss. I can do it. I'm the boss. I can do it. When she returned home to Namibia, a marching band met her on the tarmac,

along with water cannons. That was 2021. It should have been the beginning of an incredible career for a young, talented athlete. But lurking in the background, something else was happening. Something that had the potential to derail Christine's career entirely. Metrolinx and Crosslinx are reminding everyone to be careful, as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert, as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals,

be careful along our tracks, and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. In the spring of 2021, before winning the silver in Tokyo, Christine was already having an incredible season. She was racing all over the world, running really impressive times in both the 400 and the 200. But look at Momba there from Namibia. Quite a strange technique. In June, just a few weeks before the Olympics, Christine ran a race in Poland. And Momba is absolutely flying. Keep an eye on that clock.

And you don't do this. You're not supposed to do this to world-class athletes. Everybody was like, hold up. There's a teenager from Namibia running crazy times in the 400 metres. Oh my goodness, 48.56 seconds. The fastest time in the world by over half a second. That is crazy. That is absolutely crazy she tore through 200 and so that is when everybody was like hmm you know like okay who's this athlete where is she from how does an athlete come from nowhere to run this fast But she hadn't come out of nowhere. Just because she hadn't

run on the international stage, that doesn't mean she came out of nowhere. She came from somewhere. She came from Namibia. Around that same time, Hank says he got a call from someone at World Athletics, the governing body of track and field. He says that the person on the other end of the line told him they needed to test Christine. Not for doping, but for something else. We had to go to a doctor in Italy. We did some blood tests there and we also did some, I think it was sonar sound imaging with the doctor. What the doctors were looking for wasn't entirely clear to Hank at the time, but somehow Christine's performances on the track had raised suspicions. We reached out to World Athletics for this series, but they declined our interview requests. In an email they wrote,

World Athletics has a long-standing practice not to provide specific comment on any individual or ongoing cases. But I know from Hank and Christine that the results of the tests showed that Christine has naturally higher testosterone levels than most women do. And she was told she has something called a difference of sex development, or DSD. Some people with these kinds of bodies use the term intersex. This was news to Christine, who, like most people, had never once questioned her biology. But now, with this diagnosis, World Athletics placed Christine into a new category because the organization has spent years developing specific policies governing how track and field should deal with DSD athletes. The organization believes that some women with DSDs should not be allowed to compete against other women,

at least not without additional restrictions. At the time, in 2021, the DSD rules said that Christine could no longer run the so-called middle distances, 400, 800, and the mile. But she could still run shorter races. So she did. Jenny, I shall be watching the Namibian Christine Mboma very carefully. She is, of course, one of those athletes with the DSD question mark hanging over her head. If these rules seem confusing, trust me, it's not just you. They are confusing for athletes and coaches too. And they keep changing.

In the spring of 2023, World Athletics announced new regulations regarding athletes like Christine. Here's Sebastian Coe, president of World Athletics at a press conference. Let me, if I may, now turn to our DSD eligibility. The World's Athletics Council today decided to reduce the testosterone threshold for DSD athletes to 2.5 nanomoles per liter across all our events. So while before Christine could still run some distances, now she wasn't eligible for any distances. This is where we come to the huge and incredibly hard choice that DSD athletes like Christine are facing.

Give up on elite level racing in the female category? Or alter their biology to lower their testosterone? Our scientific advice is that six months is the minimum period necessary to ensure their naturally high testosterone levels are no longer giving them an advantage over biological women. Biological women. What does that mean? I'm so glad you asked, because the answer is actually really important. And it requires us to tackle a little bit of science. Maybe you remember high school biology. Maybe you don't. Maybe you loved dissecting that frog.

Or maybe you skipped class completely. But probably, at some point, your teacher did some kind of lesson about human sex biology. And maybe it went a little something like this. We are about to unfold for you an adventure in the world of science, the science that deals with the nature of living things. Through the magic of electronics, we're inviting some of the audience to come along with us and join in. Question?

Is it genes that tell whether a baby will be a boy or a girl? Yes, they do. In every male human being, the 23rd pair of chromosomes is a mismatch. One large partner and one short one. We call them an X chromosome and a Y. In the cells of every female human being, there are two X chromosomes and no Y. A fertilized egg that has

two Xs will grow into a girl. One that has an X and a Y can only grow into a boy. Sound familiar? XY equals boy, XX equals girl. And that's that. The two kinds of human beings there are. Like probably a lot of things you and I learned in high school, that's not quite the full picture. So let's try again. Question? Is it genes that tell whether a baby will be a boy or a girl? Possibly. You see, there are all kinds of ways that bodies can be configured. Biology is a rich tapestry.

Genes are just one of the many threads. Anatomy is another. Hormones are a third. And there is an amazing number of combinations of those things. You can have a person with XX chromosomes who has a penis and testicles. You can have a person with XY chromosomes who has a vagina. Some women make a ton of testosterone, and some men don't make any at all. The list of combinations and recombinations of these traits goes on and on. For the physical nature of life around us and all its wonderful variety is a constant marvel to mankind. Today, doctors and scientists have a much better picture of all the ways that human biological sex can vary.

And that's one reason that medical experts often recommend avoiding phrases like biological women, the one you heard Sebastian Coe use earlier. There is no one biological thing that makes someone a woman. And lots of people have a blend of biological traits. It's hard to pin down exactly how prevalent these variations are, but some estimates put the frequency at between 1 and 2 percent of the population. So with all this biology in mind, let's get back to World Athletics. Let me, if I may, now turn to our DSD eligibility. Their policies regulate DSD athletes. But to make this all a little more confusing,

there are lots of conditions that are considered DSDs. And the rules don't apply to all of them. Only a handful, and specifically ones that involve having high levels of naturally occurring testosterone. To be clear, these are not trans athletes. The athletes in question here were all assigned female at birth. And just like Christine, most say they never suspected that there was anything different about their bodies. But because they have high testosterone, World Athletics believes that they have an unfair advantage over other women. Here's Sebastian Coe again, the president of World Athletics, in an interview with the British news agency PA Media. My instinct is always to try and keep athletes in competition and asking those athletes with DSD to reduce their testosterone level so that we can at least try where possible to create a more level playing

field was, I felt, the right decision, the right course of action to take for the sport. There's a lot to say about that, and we're going to unpack all of this over the rest of the show. World Athletics says it has proof of that alleged unfair advantage. But other experts argue that there's no solid evidence. And by the way, as far as we know, it's only women athletes who ever get tested, not men. Hank, Christine's coach, remembers vividly the day the new rules came out. It was March 2023. Somebody sent me a message asking me, did you see this?

It was early in the morning with us. And my first reaction was, I'm not sure if this is true. And obviously when I Googled and then I realized this is the truth. Do you remember that? What was your gut feeling? I was just feeling like, I don't know, I was just disappointed. When Celestine Karony, the BBC reporter, saw the news, the first person she thought about was Christine.

And I was like, uh-oh, Christine is out of the world championships. Now she was being told the rules have changed, blankets, regulations across all events in athletics. And honestly, I thought to myself, she can't catch a break. So we had to do a lot of tests and we had to do a lot of research and we had different discussions with Christine on different options and stuff that we need to try and explain to her. Christine was just 19 when this all went down.

So Hank worked with her to make this big, hard choice. He and his wife, Elise, who is a doctor, explained to her what her medical options were to lower her testosterone levels. One of those options was surgery. Some people with DSDs have internal testes, which is the reason they have high testosterone levels. Surgery would remove those organs from her body, but that's a permanent change, and she'd have to be on hormone replacement therapy for the rest of her life.

The other option was medication, like oral contraceptives. These drugs have known side effects. Increased risk of blood clots, fatigue, mood changes. Other athletes who've taken them have reported feeling both physically and mentally sluggish and fuzzy. Most doctors we spoke with said they would not prescribe this medication to someone who didn't want or need it. The World Medical Association, an organization that advises doctors on ethical standards for care, has explicitly come out against World Athletics here, saying that asking women to take medications they do not need

purely to qualify for competition in the sex category they already occupy is medically unethical. All this to say, this is a big choice to put on a young runner. I mean, did you ever consider giving up and stopping running? Was that ever an option? Yeah, somehow. Yeah, I felt to the point that I don't want to go through it. I mean, this stuff feels like it's hitting me. And just every time, they break like, they break me down.

Running isn't just Christine's job. It's everything to her. I just love running. I don't love it because to become famous. I just love it, yeah. It's my favorite thing. It's in your blood. It's in my blood. I would say that.

Yeah. Did you ever consider trying to fight World Athletics on the rules? I think we would love to fight them. But for now, I don't think we don't have the resources. We don't have the money. And we also don't have the time. If you are not on the track, you're not earning money. And the career that was supposed to be a 12-year career just become a one-year career.

And so, ultimately, Christine opted for the medication. In April of last year, she started taking the drugs. When I was with her in January, she wasn't cleared to compete yet. She still had to prove to World Athletics that she had kept her testosterone levels down consistently for six months. Once she did that, she'd get a letter from them saying she was once again eligible to compete. And after that, she would only have a short window of time to run in races that would give her a chance to qualify for this summer's Olympics in Paris. Christine is not the only athlete in this position. From my reporting, I'm aware of at least a dozen women right now who are

facing the same choice as Christine. I've traveled around the world to spend time with some of them, and what I learned is that the impact of these policies goes far beyond this one painful choice about surgery or medications. Many of these women have now been outed as different, somehow not real women. Another athlete in this same group, Aminatou Saini, told me that when she returns home to Niger, people come up to her and ask her, Are you a woman or a man? Almost every woman I spoke with for this series who has been impacted by these regulations has a story like this, about people questioning them, telling them they don't deserve their medals or honors. When I was in Namibia, I stopped by the offices of The Namibian, a local news outlet, to talk to radio host Kelvin Chiringa. What is the most common question you get from readers or listeners about Christine?

Is she a girl? People ask you that. I mean, people that are outside Namibia, and especially people that are outside Africa. Is she a girl? And what do you say? I don't say anything. That Namibia, and especially people that are outside Africa. Is she a girl? And what do you say? I don't say anything. That's an offense to me. It's not a question.

It's an offense. But no matter what people say, Christine's coach, Hank, believes in her. He's confident that they're going to be able to overcome these obstacles, and even with the medication, make it to the Olympics in Paris. And if they do, he's going to want some answers. You said you're a sore winner. Yeah, I'm a sore winner. What are you going to say to them if you should as well?

No, no, to be honest with you, I will wrap it in their faces, and they'll have to give me answers. Why, why would you do this? Why would you put this girl through all these things? And it's a public humiliation because we need to understand that this is the life of somebody. It's not just somebody in a paper that you sit there in the office and decide who must do what. This is a life that you just destroyed. That was the first episode in the series Tested from the CBC.

In the next few episodes, Rose Everleth tells about the strange history of sex testing in sports. Rose also follows Christine Bomer's incredible journey to the Olympics and in fact, I guess spoiler alert here, in just a couple of days,

Christine will be running in the 200m sprint. So keep an eye out for it. To listen to the rest of this amazing series, search for Tested from CBC. And next week, it's our Ask Me Anything. Yeah, while we're busily working on episodes for next season, we're going to drop a little Ask Me Anything. Yeah, while we're busily working on episodes for next season, we're going to drop a little Ask Me Anything because it turns out that you guys had a lot of questions for me. So I'm going to answer them. And I think it's going to be a lot of fun. I'm Wendy Zuckerman.

Fact you next time.