An Olympic dream falters amid changing rules on the track

Maximila Imali, a top Kenyan sprinter, did not lose her eligibility to compete in the Paris Olympics because she cheated. She failed a drug test. She didn't break any rules.

Instead, she will miss this year's Summer Games because she was born with a rare genetic variant that results in naturally elevated testosterone levels. And last March, athletics' world governing body ruled that Ms Imali's biology gave her an unfair advantage at all events against other women, effectively excluding her from international competition.

As a result, Ms Imali, 27, finds her Olympic dream in jeopardy and her career and livelihood in limbo.

Unless she is willing to suppress her testosterone levels through medication – which she is not – or she prevails in an appeal she has filed against the new regulations, she and other intersex athletes will be banned from competing in all running, jumping and throwing events under the increasingly restrictive and controversial rules governing women's athletics.

The legality of those rules has been controversial as they have developed, and as sport's governing bodies attempt to balance fair play in women's sport with the complex issues of biological sex And gender identity. But the application of the regulations continues to cause confusion for those affected: rule changes are sometimes implemented with little or no warning; careers changed abruptly or ended at their peak; and shame, humiliation, and fear for personal safety.

“They are destroying our talent and our dignity,” Ms. Imali said in a recent video interview about her call. She said she shouldn't be punished for the way she was born because she had done nothing wrong.

“I was given this talent by God,” she added, “and I am using it as it is.”

The precise impact of muscle-building testosterone on top sports performance remains uncertain. World Athletics, track and field's governing body, has argued that intersex athletes in elite sport occur at exponentially higher levels than among the general female population. But the organization's top medical officials recognized in 2021 that they can demonstrate an associated but not causal link between testosterone levels and athletic performance in elite female athletes.

Despite the uncertainty, athletics has imposed increasingly strict restrictions that have interrupted or changed the careers of not only Ms. Imali, but also bigger stars such as Caster Semenya of South Africa, a two-time Olympic champion, and Francine Niyonsaba, a 2016 Olympic champion. silver medalist from Burundi.

To continue her elite career, Ms. Imali could modify her body through drugs or try to compete with men — another prospect she flatly refuses. (“I am a woman,” she said.) Instead, she is appealing to the Switzerland-based Court of Arbitration for Sport, the final arbiter in global sports disputes. According to her lawyers, a hearing is scheduled for this spring.

Ms Imali has been given legal aid by the court to help reimburse the costs of arbitration, and its lawyers work pro bono. But the appeal process still costs tens of thousands of dollars — money she says she doesn't have, so she's trying to crowdfund her challenge.

“Access to justice is a serious problem,” said James Bunting, one of Ms. Imali's Toronto-based lawyers.

Without a ruling in her favor, Ms Imali will be ineligible to compete in national or international events, which could result in prize money or sponsorship contracts. At the same time, she and her partner struggle to care for their four-year-old son, care for her grandmother and pay the rent and school fees for her two younger sisters.

The case involves athletes who were born with a genetic condition known as 46, XYDSD. Athletes with the 46,XY DSD trait have genitalia that are not typically male or female; an X and a Y chromosome in each cell, the typical male pattern; and levels of testosterone in the male range.

Growing up in the village of Moiben, Kenya, Ms. Imali grew up in a family – mother, grandmother, two sisters and a cousin she considered a brother – that sometimes could not provide enough food for everyone every day. She said running was her chance for hope.

In 2014, at the age of 18, she qualified for the 800 meters at the World Junior Athletics Championships. She pulled a hamstring during the final and withdrew, but was encouraged by the fact that she was among the fastest runners in the world in her age group.

However, several months later, her optimism was shattered. Ms Imali said doctors and officials attached to Athletics Kenya, the governing body for athletics in her country, told her she was ineligible to continue competing. At a hospital in the capital Nairobi, she said, she was made to take off her clothes and undergo an examination – a common story among intersex athletes – and then was told by a doctor that she could, for a fee, undergo surgery to turn her into a to make it 'pure'. girl.”

Ms Imali said she was confused. She said she never received any documents or test results and was only told at the hospital that she had high testosterone levels. Her mother assured her that she was a girl, and until then no one, including herself, had ever doubted it. She refused the operation.

“I can't just destroy my body,” she said.

In 2015, the Court of Arbitration for Sport suspended then-current restrictions on athletics against female competitors with naturally high testosterone levels, a condition known as hyperandrogenism. The court, op a case involving an Indian sprinterfound insufficient evidence that hyperandrogenic athletes achieved a performance advantage so great that they should be banned from competing against women.

The ruling meant Ms Imali was allowed to return to running, but she soon encountered a personal obstacle: she gave up the sport for a while to care for her mother, who had fallen ill and later died in August 2016. The cause was a cerebral hemorrhage. tumor, Ms. Imali said, but she blamed herself for causing her mother so much stress.

In 2017, she resumed her career and qualified for the World Athletics Championships in the 400 meters. But her career came to a halt again in 2019 after athletics tried to impose new participation restrictions, and Ms Semenya lost an important decision in her own case.

In that case, the arbitration court, by a 2-1 vote, upheld a ban on intersex athletes in events from 400 meters to the mile – where their advantages in strength, muscle mass and oxygen-carrying capacity were considered most pronounced – unless they brought their testosterone levels into the female range lowered. The decision stopped Ms Semenya from defending her 800m title at the Olympic Games in Tokyo.

The court at the time acknowledged that the ruling was discriminatory, but said it was “necessary, reasonable and proportionate” to ensure a “level playing field” in women's events.

Blocked from her most famous events, Ms Imali switched to shorter races. In 2022, she set Kenyan records 100 meters and 200 meters and won a silver medal in the 200 at the African Championships. However, in March 2023, her career was stopped again, perhaps permanently.

World Athletics expanded existing restrictions and announced that intersex athletes were ineligible to compete in all women's events unless they lowered their testosterone levels to 2.5 nanomoles per liter, half of what was previously allowed.

The stricter restrictions came after two intersex athletes performed impressively in previously unrestricted events at the 2021 Tokyo Games: Christine Mboma from Namibiawho won a silver medal in the 200 meters at the age of 18, and Ms Niyonsaba, who finished fifth in the 10,000.

Sebastian Coe, the president of World Athletics, said no athlete had asked for the stricter participation rules. But without them, he said, “no woman will ever win another sporting event.”

Ms Imali said the change in rules had left her shocked but also made her feel unsafe. People taunt her, call her a man, she said. She fears losing her job with the Kenyan police, a perk of her running career that, without athletics, is her only way to support herself and her family.

“They're not just destroying me,” she said. “They are destroying the people who depend on me.”

In her appeal, her lawyers are expected to argue that there is insufficient evidence to show that intersex athletes have an unfair advantage in every athletic event. Until then, Ms. Imali and other affected athletes face what they say is an impossible choice: undergo treatments to maintain lower testosterone levels, which they claim are unnecessary and potentially harmful, or give up their livelihoods.

“They must understand that we are human beings,” Ms. Imali said, “and they must respect human rights.”