Hi, I'm Wendy, look at 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 You 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 spring top and I don't want to tell you too much This story comes from a new podcast called tested which is hosted by Rose Eveleth and even if you're not big on the Olympics Not big into sprinting. I think you're gonna 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 one the choice coming right up 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 and Pierre de Coubertin The 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 need them men strength endurance power It was the modern Olympics But then the Coubertin encountered a challenge winning They wanted to compete in the games but again and again the 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 gonna insist on having men sports and women 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 are 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 Rosevele 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.
Jai 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 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 named 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 Christine not 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 Oh, we are currently in my hometown. Yeah, what is it like? I mean to be here.
I mean feel home. I just feel you know, they feel like I'm home. Yes. Yeah We're driving through Christine's hometown a small village called Xing yung way in the northern most part of Namibia It took us about eight hours to get here from the capital where she now lives We go up here like next to the beautiful view of the Galango 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 super human. Yeah, yeah, super human Can I ask you a question? Oh, do you know Christine Boma? Yeah, is she famous around here?
Why is she famous? Because she's blooming up Did you watch when she won in the Olympics? Mm-hmm. What was that like?
It's a so fast so fast. Yeah. Do you want to meet Christine? Obama?
Yeah, she's right over there Yeah 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. They're going to see an inspiration to the young ones Growing up here in rural Namibia Christine did not have big dreams of athletic super sardom 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 This is Celestine karoni a BBC Africa reporter who has been covering track and field for years She had this period of her life, you know where she socially she felt alone, you know But then she found sport she found athletics and she was exactly she was doing well When I'm running I feel good. I was a little good I like when I was at the village moon my mom passed on things changed We're like people that love you and your mom was they they're like they now don't love you and you lost friends That's why I was into sport like every time when I go and play in it ball and every time when I go and run And I just feel like I forgot about like things people to say to me or things that are happening to me and Running helped me a lot with like a stress and other side like depression was I lost my mom when I was dating Christine didn't really get serious about running until she met a coach named Hank 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 gonna make it people saying that I'm still like small and I was skinny I'm not able to run with the people you mean to 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 it was something special pretty soon Hank and Christine would make an 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 But 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 marisha say Talu Gaby Thomas Of course you had your micans come out and for sure young friends of price, you know We have flaming hair and everybody's just look at all can when we rocket to get another, you know go on my door So as Dean Coroni the BBC Africa reporter was at that final in Tokyo and everybody's wondering well We need to be a Jamaican's in America little bit of a man's in another Caribbean I will honestly say coming into this final.
I did not give Kristin 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 bomba mamba mamba, but just so we're clear her last name is Boma Here's the other 18 year old from Namibia Christine and Bama Christine wasn't the only Namibian in that race her teammate Beatrice Masalingi was there too Hank was coaching both of them The starting blocks in Tokyo were different than the ones they were used to figure and fancier with built-in electronics to sense a false start And so before the race Hank gave both Namibians Beatrice and Christine one big piece of advice I said please don't fall start and maybe from from my my side was also rookie mistake I think they were so scared to do a false start that That's my biggest feels like like when could say don't fall start that was that I was most kid That was like I have to make sure that I'm as easily to the gun and I must not go face no other stuff And they're away in the opening van in Talu with a trademark start Unlike Alu Christine terrified to fall start gets up 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 Marisha say Talu of Ivory Coast Moojinga Kombunji from Switzerland Shelly Anne Frasier Bryce of Jamaica and then finally Gabby Thomas of the US Here's Celestine again In the final seconds Christine rockets passed everyone except for one of the Jamaicans And Pama the 18 year old from Namibia will get the silver and 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 2181 at every stage here in Tokyo She has up the ante but there was no one to challenge and I was so excited about that I didn't even let I thought like I would not be second-class or something like that You really thought you'd be second-classed? Yeah At that moment, all was everybody who's a African descent or who's African on that stadium was Namibian after the finish Christine runs to the stands and grabs her coach Hank for a huge hug You see what's within my eyes and say to me coach.
I'm the boss and Yes, it was just it was just a wonderful moment I'm the boss. I love that that is a multiple you can see she will go down if she's scared or she's got a nerve So just tell yourself. 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 young talented athlete But lurking in the background something else was happening something that had the potential to derail Christine's career entirely 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 Namibia quite a strange technique in June just a few weeks before the Olympics Christine ran a race in Poland And mamba is absolutely flying keep an eye on that clock and you don't do this You're not supposed to do this world-class athlete Hold up there's a teenager from Namibia running crazy times in the 400 meters Oh my goodness 48.5 six seconds the fastest time in the world by over half a second. That is crazy That is absolutely crazy And so that is when everybody was like hmm, you know like okay Who's this athlete where she from how does an athlete come from nowhere to run this fast?
But she hadn't come out of nowhere just because she had an 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 Dragonfield 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 blast this day and we also did some some I think it was son of sound imaging with a 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 these so-called middle distances 400 800 and the mile But she could still run shorter races so she did I shall be watching then a maybe in Christian and Boma very carefully She is of course one of those athletes with a DSD question mark hanging overhead, but she has had 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 they 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 jeans that tell whether a baby or 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 ex-promosome and a Y In the cells of every female human being there are two ex-promosomes and no Y Affertilized egg that has two X's will grow into a girl one that has an X and a Y can only grow into a boy Sound familiar?
X Y equals boy. X X 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 jeans that tell whether a baby or 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.
Jeans 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 X X chromosomes who has a penis and testicles You can have a person with X Y chromosomes who has a vagina Some women make a ton of testosterone and some men don't make any at all A list of combinations and recombinations of these traits goes on and on 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 one and two 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 that 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 when I google And then I realized this is the truth Do you remember that? What was your gut feeling? Just I was just feeling like I don't know, I just disappointed When Celestine Caroni, the BBC reporter saw the news, the first person she thought about was Christine And I was like, uh oh, Christine is out on the wall championships Now she was being told, uh, the rules have changed, blankets, um regulations across all events in athletics and honestly, I thought to myself she got cat-to-brick So we had to do a lot of this and we had to do a lot of research and we had different discussions with Christine on different options and 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 was 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 that 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 of 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 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 I'm like, I will They'll break me down Running isn't just Christine's job It's everything to her I just love running, I just, I don't love it because I don't like it because I just love it, yeah This is my favorite thing It's in your blood This is my blood, I was like that, yeah Did you ever consider trying to fight oral 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 We also don't have the time If you are not on the track, you're not any 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, I mean not too sainey, 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 Charinga What is the most common question you get from readers or listeners about Christine? Is she a girl?
That people ask me that I mean people that are outside Namibia and these people that are outside Africa You see 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 are 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 were a sore winner Yeah, I'm a sore winner What are you going to say to them a few years ago? No, to be honest with you, I will wrap it in their faces They'll have to give me answers, 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 a life of somebody It's not just somebody in a paper that you sit in office and decide who wants to 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 Eveleth tells about the strange history of sex testing in sports Rose also follows Christine Beaumont's incredible journey to the Olympics And in fact, I guess spoiler alert here, just a couple of days, Christine will be running in the 200 meters 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 visually working on episodes for next season, we're going to drop a little ask me anything Because it turns out that you guys have a lot of questions for me So I'm going to answer them, I think it's going to be a lot of fun When is the COVID fact you next time?