 competitive events, such as the marathon, have dissipated. The recent phenomenal success of the US World Cup soccer team provides yet another example of the increasing acceptance and popularity of women's sports.
The sociologic changes, improved training, and the attraction
of more women into sports have naturally led to some striking
improvement in athletic achievements by women. For example,
Joan Benoit's time for the marathon at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics,
the first year this event
was run for women, would have beaten all men's times before the 1956 Olympics. Women's times in the swimming events are even closer to those of men. The women's Olympic record in the 100-meter freestyle, set in 1992, would have beaten all men's times before the 1964 Olympics, including the 1924 time of the legendary Johnny Weissmuller, by almost 5 seconds. The 1988 Olympic record in the women's 400-meter freestyle would have beaten all men's times before the 1972 Olympics, including the 1924 time of Johnny Weissmuller, by over a minute. Even more striking is the comparison of men and women in cross-country skiing, arguably an event that puts greater premium on agility and coordination as well as endurance. In the 15-kilometer race, the women's Olympic record of 1994 would have beaten all men's before 1992; in the 30-kilometer race, the women's time in 1992 would have beaten men's in all previous Olympic events.
As women's athletic competition became more acceptable and popular, increasing attention was devoted to the concept of a "level playing field." In a number of instances, questions were raised regarding the "femininity" of highly successful female competitors, in particular during the Cold War era of competition between the United States and the former Soviet Union. These rumors were abetted by anecdotal reports of recognized athletes who were found to have varying degrees of intersexuality. In 1 case, a Polish sprinter with an apparent chromosomal mosaicism was stripped of her medals. Three track and field champions who competed as women before World War II subsequently underwent reconstructive surgery and sex reassignment. These cases led to efforts to ensure that women competing at international events were in fact women, initially with rather crude and demeaning efforts at physical examination. In 2 instances, women athletes were required to parade nude before a panel of female physicians, and at another event women athletes were required to undergo direct gynecologic examination.
These initial crude attempts at gender verification were soon
replaced by less direct measures: first, the use of a buccal smear
for sex chromatin, which was implemented at the 1968 winter games
in Grenoble on an experimental basis and formally adopted at the
1968 summer games in Mexico City. Until the last decade, this
remained the standard for gender verification, notwithstanding
that by the mid-1970s, the test was discarded by medical professionals
as technically unreliable. More importantly, the test detected
athletes who were unassailably feminine
but who happened to have an XY chromosomal pattern. Many of these individuals had variants of androgen resistance, either complete or partial -- in which case, they are naturally resistant to the strength-promoting qualities of testosterone. Others had variants of XY gonadal dysgenesis. Ironically, the sex chromatin test would have permitted recognized males with an XXY karyotype, or Klinefelter's syndrome, and XX males, who have a portion of the testicular determining gene (SRY) transposed onto the X chromosome, to compete.[1,2]
Concerns regarding the appropriateness of sex chromatin for
gender verification were voiced continuously in the 1970s and
1980s, but their impact was limited because of the absence of
information regarding the frequency of positive results and the
subsequent diagnoses and follow-up. At virtually every Olympic
event, however, abundant rumors circulated; in one instance, this
author was informed that women athletes who were detected as "positive"
were instructed to feign injurie