Eight years after crossing the finish line in fourth place at the Rio Olympics, former Team GB 800-meter runner Lynsey Sharp reflects on what might have been. The Scottish athlete now knows that under current World Athletics rules, the three competitors who finished ahead of her in that fateful final would not have been eligible to compete in the women’s category.
Sharp’s story takes on new significance following revelations from World Athletics that approximately 50 to 60 athletes with differences of sex development (DSD) reached finals in women’s track and field events at major international competitions between 2000 and today. These athletes possess a 46 XY chromosome pattern with male testes but were assigned female gender at birth.
“Sometimes I look back and think, you know, I could have had an Olympic medal,” Sharp admits during a recent interview. “You were competing against athletes with male levels of testosterone, Y-chromosomes. They would not be able to race under today’s rules.”
The statistics presented by Dr Stéphane Bermon, head of health and science at World Athletics, paint a striking picture. DSD cases appear 151.9 times more frequently in elite athletics than would be expected based on their occurrence in the general population. Between 2000 and 2023, a total of 135 DSD finalists competed across elite international events, with some athletes participating in multiple finals throughout their careers.
For Sharp, who set a Scottish record in that Rio final that still stands as her personal best, the timing of rule changes has been particularly poignant. “The sport looks very different now than it did when I was competing. It’s changed a lot,” she explains. “At the start of my career I had medals upgraded for d**gs cheats. In the second half of my career there was the DSD athletes and as you say they wouldn’t be allowed to compete now.”
The aftermath of her public comments following the Rio race proved challenging for the athlete. “It was a really difficult time and sadly it did kind of taint my experience in the sport and at the Olympics in Rio,” Sharp recalls. “And it just completely took away from my performance and my enjoyment in the sport.”
Sharp faced criticism and was labeled a sore loser for voicing her concerns, despite her academic background in the subject. “I studied law. I did my dissertation on intersex athletes in sport. So it was something that I knew a lot about and was also passionate about the topic,” she explains. “So it never came from a place of being bitter or sore about losing.”
World Athletics has since implemented new SRY screening procedures, using cheek swab tests to determine biological sex at world championships. The organization’s president, Sebastian Coe, has taken a firm stance on the issue, stating: “The philosophy that we hold dear in World Athletics is the protection and the promotion of the integrity of women’s sport.”
Coe further emphasized the organization’s position: “We are saying, at elite level, for you to compete in the female category, you have to be biologically female. It was always very clear to me and the World Athletics Council that gender cannot trump biology.”
However, the new protocols have drawn criticism from scientific quarters. Professor Andrew Sinclair, who originally discovered the SRY gene being used in the screening process, has described using the SRY gene test to determine biological sex as “overly simplistic.”
Sharp acknowledges the complexity of the situation while maintaining her position. “It wasn’t on me to make that decision,” she reflects. “It was never something personally against the other athletes.” She points to prominent cases like South African runner Caster Semenya, who claimed Olympic gold in 2012 and 2016, and Namibian sprinter Christine Mboma, who earned silver at Tokyo 2020, both of whom have been absent from elite competition since the new regulations were introduced.
Looking toward the future, Sharp believes more comprehensive action is needed. When asked whether the International Olympic Committee has done enough to protect the female category, she responds firmly: “No, I think we saw in Paris that it’s definitely not a resolved issue in Olympic sport.”
Sharp advocates for universal standards across all Olympic sports rather than allowing individual federations to set their own rules. “I think it needs to be universal throughout the whole… The Olympics and the IOC really need to make that decision before we get to LA in 2028.”
