Gender examinations for athletes

I am not talking about the recent case where a "woman" was running with a lunch box like Linford Christies and somehow was allowed to compete on some technicality.

Does anyone have any stories from sixties or seventies where female athletes all had to be examined by team of doctors?

I read a bit from a book I think it was Linda Peters and she had to strip off and lie on a couch with her legs spread wide for an examination which she described as more of a crude groping.

Another woman I heard on the radio said all the girls had to wait in the room for the doctors coming round.The presenter asked why the doctors came round and she said the turn you upside down to check your not a man.That really got me curious.Love to hear more about this sunject.No one at the other forum could help me.

Imagine being one of these doctors.All the fittest women in the world to examine.Smith

It was Mary Peters who describes that and several other exams in her autobiography published around 1974 / 5

Thanks for information were the other exams all for different competitions? Smith

Sorry to disappoint but I have it on good authority that they are not doing it at London 2012 because of health and safety concerns.

Apparently they couldn't find a doc who was willing to ask the female boxers to take their panties off and spread their legs!...Scary or what...lol.

The other girls can run too fast anyway...Come on Jess..we love you!

Dr Philip - The UK Play Doctor reporting from the Olympic Park.

Interesting topic really. I have always wondered about the same thing myself.

Mashie

I just figured they ran tests.

This subject reared its head in 2009 when an athlete named Caster Semenya found her gender being questioned.

In 2011, the BBC made a radio programme called 'The Sex Test' which carried an interview with Dame Mary Peters in which she spoke of her experiences. The programme is still available to be heard on the BBC iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0132l7q

For the benefit of those of you who do not have access to this resource, I will relate the salient points of Dame Mary's contribution. The tests she encountered first took place at the Commonwealth Games in Jamaica in 1966. She and all the other women competitors from the UK and Northern Ireland were told by their team manager to assemble outside a nominated room at a certain time. No explanation for this instruction was given at the time it was issued; only when the team had gathered at the appointed place were they told that they were to be physically examined.

Dame Mary recalled that as each person went in the room (one at a time) anyone that came out "seemed to flee the scene". She said that they were required to place their heels in stirrups for the examination, which was apparently to check that none of them had suffered an 'accident of birth' that had given them internal testes.

Later in 1966, Dame Mary and her team mates were competing in the European Championships in Budapest when they were again required to present themselves for inspection. She recalled: "This time we had to walk naked into a room where there were ten doctors looking at us, we did a pirouette and stood there for a few moments....."

These methods were, by the time of the 1968 Olympics, replaced by tests on saliva and hair follicles.

Here's an article which shows that physical examination of athletes was taking place long before Dame Mary's time: http://www.123hjemmeside.dk/GENDER_TESTING/19174884

Many thanks to Macca for his detailed and informed post...

Apparently nowadays they treat it in a much more simple way and merely seek to catch men masquerading as women.

Because of the very strict anti-doping regime, the first five finishers in each event plus two more at random have to provide urine samples, and random urine tests are also carried out on athletes in the olympic village.

To prevent sample swopping, the urine has to be passed while an official watches. The authorities take the view that it would be difficult for a man to pretend to be a woman in that situation.

Both male and female athletes now have regular medicals as part of their training regime and there is some sort of eight year record /'passport' thing, again related to drugs, but I'm not too clear on that. And I'm not sure if the medicals include gyn exams.

Dr Philip - The UK Play Doctor.

For interest I got a cheap copy of Mary Peters autobiography from Amazon and repeat some of the relevant section here...

"The news came as a bit of a shock when we were told on on arrival at the 1966 Commonwealth Games in Kingston Jamaica that we had to submit to sex tests.

We were all told to report to a building and wait in the corridor outside the room. Everyone was there dressed in their housecoats, school girls of sixteen up to women of thirty-five. It didn't get off to a good start. A woman doctor came out and said "If any of you have got knickers on go and take them off" Of course we all did and bra's too, so had to go back to our rooms and come back naked under our housecoats.

We were called in one by one in alphabetical order, so I had a long wait. The girls who went in didn't come out smiling, and rushed back to their rooms without speaking, no-one gave us a hint of what procedure we might expect in there.

At last my name was called and I went into a bare room which contained two women doctors, one examination couch, and an enamel bowl containing some white cloudy antiseptic, in which the doctors apparently washed their hands after each examination.

I was ordered to lie on the couch and pull my knees up. The doctors then proceeded to undertake an examination which can only be described as a grope. Presumably they were searching for hidden testes. They found none and I left, rushing back to my room without speaking to the ones still waiting in the corridor"

Dr Philip - The UK Play Doctor.