A top Indian woman athlete who won a silver medal at a recent regional championship has failed a gender test, officials say.
Santhi Soundararajan, who took the silver in the women’s 800m race at the Asian Games in Doha, is likely to be stripped of her award, reports say.
Soundararajan, 25, was declared the best athlete at an Indian championship in the capital, Delhi, this year.
She is possibly the third Indian sportswoman to fail a gender test.
“Santhi was subjected to a gender test in Doha and we have received the report which says she failed the test,” said Manmohan Singh, chairman of the Indian Olympic Association’s Medical Commission.
The test is not mandatory, but carried out if officials want it or a rival team protests, reports say.
Second controversy
The test was done soon after Soundararajan came second in the women’s 800m race on 9 December.
Reports say the athlete cleared the gender test at the Asian track and field championship in South Korea last year where she won the silver medal in the 800m.
It is not clear how she failed the test at the Asian Games in Doha.
This the second controversy to hit Indian athletes within a month - female shot putter Seema Antil was withdrawn from the Asian Games she failed a pre-competition dope test.
I dont get it. how in the world did she manage to fail a gender test? what makes up the test anyways? physical inspection? Hormones? or was it because she took testosterone pumping drugs??
They stopped doing physical inpections in the 1960s because female athelete complained that it was degrading to have to strip naked and also sometimes undergo gynecological exams.
(Incidentally, in the original Olympic games in Ancient Greece the men used to compete totally naked…)
At any rate, the current gender test involved a genetic test based on taking a swab of skin cells from inside the mouth.
In 1955, a man from Germany admitted to having participated in the 1936 Olympics as a woman under pressure from the Nazi party; and two Soviet “female” athletes chose to retire when gender testing was introduced.
Well I think they should introduce all sex track races..men, women, eunuchs, gays, omnisexuals and let people consume as much drugs, steriods as possible... and name such event as
This is really weird. Normally you can just tell by looking at a person, but of course there are people whose physical appearance is somewhere inbetween (like in this particular case).
It could be outright Indian cheating. Both the Nazi Party in Germany and the Communist Party in the USSR arranged for men to be disguised as women and entered into women’s Olympic competitions.
It’s not unfeasible that the Congress Party in India adopted a similar policy.
hahahahah.