By supporting the admission of biological males into female sport, the NCAA and IOC are enabling cheating worse than blood doping

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These two things are true, and everyone associated with elite sport knows them to be true: i) males who have gone through puberty (and even before to a measurable degree) are biologically advantaged over females in sports that demand speed, power and endurance; and ii) taking testosterone will provide an advantage to women competing against other women, but lowering testosterone will not erase the advantage of males who compete against women.

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The only sport stakeholders who deny these truths are ideologues, or those who lack the integrity to support facts over ideology-based theories. It is wrong, but understandable, that coaches with their livelihoods on the line will comply with policies they know are unethical. But it is not understandable that mega-associations responsible for national and international regulation, such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), or the International Olympic Committee (IOC), should abet the erosion of sport’s very foundation — a level playing field — by setting policies that deny or minimize immutable biological differences between male and female athletes.

The admission of biological males into women’s sport is a form of cheating, no different in ethical turpitude from doping, which, we once assumed, would be the greatest scandal ever attached to elite sport. This is worse. At least then, no sport bodies ever publicly affirmed that cheaters’ right to dope should be privileged over clean athletes’ right to fair play.

Former Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies, who set a British........

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