Women’s track and field says no to men

Track and field’s international governing body has told biological males to “stay in their lane,” so to speak.

The World Athletics Council (WAC) has banned biological males who have experienced puberty, but now identify as female, from competing in women’s events at international competitions. The ban, announced Thursday, goes into effect at the end of March.

The ban may not be permanent. WAC officials declared it will form a group to consider transgender participation and will revisit the issue in one year. In other words, there’s at least a possibility that male athletes will compete alongside women at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

“Decisions are always difficult when they involve conflicting needs and rights between different groups,” WAC President Sebastian Coe told the media. “As more evidence becomes available, we will review our position, but we believe the integrity of the female category in athletics is paramount.”

As in other sports, men have physical advantages when competing against women in track and field. Consider:

• Approximately 150 male athletes have run the 100-meter dash—track’s fastest race—in less than 10 seconds. A high schooler, Matthew Boling of Texas, accomplished the feat in 2019. By contrast, only one woman has ever run the race in less than 10.5 seconds: Florence Griffith-Joyner did it—barely—at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, posting a time of 10.49.

• CeCe (formerly Craig) Telfer of New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce University barely ranked among the top 400 NCAA Division II hurdlers when competing against men. Running against women, Telfer won an NCAA Division I title, winning the 400-meter hurdles in 2019 to become the first male national champion in a women’s event.

• The national women’s record in the high jump is 6 feet, 8-3/4 inches, set by Chaunté Lowe in 2010. California’s 2017 high school boys’ champion in the event, Sean Lee, cleared the bar at 7-3.

• In NCAA, Olympic, and international competitions, men throw a 16-pound metal ball in the shot put, while women throw an 8.8-pound ball—the same weight as the shot women throw in high school. Despite throwing a heavier ball, American Ryan Crouser set a world record in the shot put at the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo, heaving the shot 75 feet, 5-1/4 inches. In 1980, Ilona Slupianek of East Germany set the women’s Olympic record of 73, 6-1/4 with the much lighter shot.

Track and field is not the only sport whose governing body prohibits men from competing in women’s events. World Aquatics, which governs swimming, voted last June to bar male athletes from elite women’s competitions if they have experienced any part of male puberty.