Watching The Olympics? You Need To Hear This Podcast.

"Tested" follows the unfolding story of elite female runners who have been told they can no longer race as women, because of their biology.

Dani Pendergast for NPR

Would You Alter Your Body For The Chance To Compete For A Gold Medal?

Since the beginning of women's sports, there has been a struggle over who qualifies for the women's category. The fantastic new 6-part podcast series 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 the Olympics approach, they face hard choices: take drugs to lower their natural testosterone levels, give up their sport entirely, or fight. To understand how we got here, journalist Rose Eveleth traces the surprising, 100-year history of sex testing.

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INTERVIEW: Tested Host Rose Eveleth

For people who haven't heard Tested yet, how do describe what it's about and why they might want to listen? 

• Tested is about the past, present and future of so-called “gender verification” policies in sports — policies that have been around for almost a century, and that to this day exclude women from competition. Tested follows the unfolding story of elite female runners who have been told they can no longer race as women, because of their biology. And it traces the history of these policies to their origins. Why did we ever test women to see if they were really women in the first place? This story is about so much more than sports — it’s about fairness, and gender, and how we categorize the world. What do we do when reality doesn’t line up with rigidly defined categories? Who gets to decide what is fair? And what happens to those left behind?

What audience did you have in mind as you created the series? 

• The show is co-distributed by The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and National Public Radio (NPR), which means that it’s for the most general audience possible. My hope was to reach folks who might have seen headlines about this, or people talking about it, but found the whole topic kind of confusing and overwhelming. What is really going on here? What does the science actually say? And what should people make of all this history? While we were working on the show, we really tried to keep in mind an audience that might not know very much, but that is coming to this story with an open mind and genuine curiosity — people who want to understand this better and haven’t already made up their mind. 

What brought you to this story and made you want to investigate further?

• I’ve always been a big sports fan, and in particular track and field. I had heard about Caster Semenya when she first burst onto the scene in 2009, but I didn’t follow her story closely until around 2012. At the time I was an intern at Scientific American, and wound up writing a story about a different South African runner named Oscar Pistorius — who at the time was famous for being “the Blade Runner.” Pistorius was a double amputee, and people were arguing that he had an unfair advantage over able bodied runners because of his prosthetics. In researching that story, I came across Caster’s case again, and something about it just grabbed me. I couldn’t stop thinking about all the newspaper articles and news clips I watched, arguing that Caster was somehow not “really a woman.” What did that even mean? How would they know? Why was she asked to regulate her hormones? And from there I was hooked.

How challenging was it to pitch this series and find a home for it? What made you want to stick with it? 

• I spent eight years pitching this story, and got 26 “no”s before the CBC said “yes” (and then eventually later NPR joined on). For many of those years I spent my own savings to travel around the world and meet athletes and coaches affected by these policies. I think that for me this story was just too compelling to give up on. Like I said earlier, it is about so much more than sports. It’s about what we do when we learn new information. How do we update our world based on a better, fuller understanding of complexity? What does justice and equity and fairness really mean? I knew there was a compelling series here, and I just couldn’t stop myself from trying to sell it.

How did you build trust with the athletes you feature, who share some very personal experiences with you? 

• I think a lot about the responsibilities of a journalist on a story like this — particularly given that these women have been treated so badly by the press in the past. I try to talk to sources at length before we start recording, and explain to them exactly what my series is going to try and do and what my perspective is. I make it clear to them that they don’t have to answer questions they don’t want to answer. I also think that the project being audio only helped — I made promises to these athletes that this would not be visual, that their faces would not be used, that we wouldn’t be broadcasting their images at all. And I always ask sources what they want the story to include — what is it that they want me to say? Why do they want to participate? What would the ideal outcome be for them? 

What are some of the most interesting or surprising places you travelled while making this series? 

• I got to travel a lot for this series, which was a real joy. I went to so many places I have never been before, but the place that I definitely want to go back to is Namibia. It’s just so gorgeous and has such incredible, and varied, ecology. When I’m reporting, I rarely get to experience the more touristy things a place has to offer — I spent most of my time in Namibia standing in a gym, or on the side of a track. I’d love to go back and actually see the dunes! 

After working on this series, how do you feel about watching the Olympics?

• The Olympics are always a complicated event for me. On the one hand, I love seeing athletes push themselves and perform across so many different sports. I love encountering and becoming a fan of people I’d never heard of before, and watching sports I would never otherwise watch. At the same time, the Olympics has always had a dark side. Each games comes with its own share of human rights violations, toxic nationalism, and misguided choices. I would never want to take anything away from the athletes who are at the games. But also I can’t watch without thinking about the women who aren’t there, who haven’t been included. Not just the athletes with sex variations that Tested follows, but also trans women, French women who are not allowed to compete in hijab, the Palestinian athletes who have been killed, and all the other athletes whose stories we don’t even know about. 

Has working on this series made you into an advocate? Are there specific policy changes you would like to see in regards to athletic qualifications?

• I think that for me the changes I’d like to see in sports, based on my reporting, are fairly simple: let women run as they are. That goes for athletes with sex variations, and for trans women. I think in some cases, a third category specifically for nonbinary athletes who don’t want to compete in the male or female category is a great idea (although to be clear, this should be something people opt into, not a place they’re forced into because they don’t fit someone’s notion of male/female). I’d love to see a bigger, more interesting and creative conversation about the future of sports and what it might look like if we were to relax the rigid sex categories that currently exist. 

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Listen To the Tested Trailer

Want to check out Tested? Here’s a three-minute preview - give it a listen and I think you’ll want to hear the whole series:

• EPISODE ONE: THE CHOICE
  Would you alter your body for the chance to compete for a gold medal? That’s the question facing a small group of elite athletes right now. Last year, track and field authorities announced new regulations that mean some athletes can’t compete in the female category unless they lower their body’s naturally occurring testosterone levels. In this episode you’ll meet one of those runners, Christine Mboma, a reigning Olympic silver medalist, and hear about the difficult choice she faces.

• EPISODE TWO: QUESTIONS OF A PHYSICAL NATURE
  We go back to the beginnings of women’s inclusion in elite sports. It turns out that men had an odd variety of concerns about women athletes. Some doubted these athletes were even women at all. And that skepticism resulted in the first sex testing policies.

• EPISODE THREE: CARD CARRYING FEMALES

  We meet Kenyan sprinter Maximila Imali, who—like Christine—has been sidelined by DSD policies. She makes a different choice from Christine: to fight the regulations in court. And we learn about an earlier fight, when scientists, athletes, and journalists spent thirty years trying to end an earlier version of sex testing.

• EPISODE FOUR: RUNNING IN CIRCLES

  In 2009, South African sprinter Caster Semenya won gold at the World Championships. But instead of a celebration, she endured endless speculation about her body, her biology, and her gender. And soon, sports organizations would launch a new round of regulations, lead to multiple court cases, and require sporting organizations to justify their claim that DSD athletes have an unfair advantage.

• EPISODE FIVE: UNFAIR ADVANTAGE?

  A battle over science and ethics unfolds. World Athletics releases and then tweaks multiple policies impacting DSD athletes, while critics cry foul. In this episode, World Athletics doubles down on its claims, Caster Semenya challenges the rules again, and we dig deep on a big question: what constitutes an “unfair” advantage on the track?

• EPISODE SIX: LUMPERS AND SPLITTERS

  Christine and Max are some of the most recent female athletes in this century-long history to face tests, stigma, and restrictions. But they are unlikely to be the last. In this episode, we find out whether Christine qualifies for the Paris Olympics, as well as the fate of Max’s court case. And we explore the broader implications of the sex binary in sports. Is there a better way for sports to be categorized?

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