http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/trackandfield/news/story?id=2701018


Indian runner fails gender test, loses medal AssociatedPress

NEW DELHI, India -- An Indian runner who won a silver medal in the women's 800 meters at the Asian Games failed a gender test and was stripped of the medal.

Shanti Sounderajan, 25, took the gender test in Doha, Qatar, after placing second.

The test reports sent to the Indian Olympic Association on Sunday said Soudarajan "does not possess the sexual characteristics of a woman," The Times of India reported. The test was administered by a medical commission set up by the games' organizers.

The Indian Olympic Association said Monday it has been told by the Olympic Council of Asia that the 25-year-old runner was disqualified.

"IOA has asked the Athletic Federation of India to return the medal as desired by the Olympic Council of Asia," the Indian Olympic group said.

The IOA also asked its medical commission to inquire into Sounderajan's case and report within 10 days.

There are no compulsory gender tests during events sanctioned by track and field's international ruling body, but athletes may be asked to take a gender test. The medical evaluation panel usually includes a gynecologist, endocrinologist, psychologist and internal medicine specialist.

An Indian athletics official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media said Sounderajan almost certainly never had sex-change surgery.

Instead, the official said Sounderajan appeared to have "abnormal chromosomes." The official also said the test revealed more Y chromosomes than allowed.

Sounderajan was not immediately available for comment.


When I first clicked on this, I was thinking it was a dude pretending to be a chick. Then I read towards the end that it appears the person never had a sex change and obviously, isnt a straight up man. Now Im just weirded out. Its a chick with man genes or something. What the hell!? Ive had some chicks hit on me at the bar where I was thinking 'kinda broad shoulders for a chick' but still obviously a chick, now I have to wonder if they had man genes (No those chicks never got a number or a banging). My gf isnt manly at all, but does she have MAN GENES!? Where does it end? My whole world is just fucked now.

To make you feel a little better...

My "I'm not a doctor but I play one on the Internet" hunch is that this is one of a class of specific diseases called Swyer Syndrome. Her broken guy gene (guy-selecting part of the Y chromosome) broke -very- early on in the fetus stage,. She developed as a woman because at least the one X gene was there, and it has enough know-how to get things mostly right. If she were a competitive athlete in her teens (a quick Google indicates that's true), it's possible the signs of Swyer syndrome, which crop up in teenage puberty as "lack of a period and bigger breasts", could be misdiagnosed as "consequences of being a high-caliber athlete". About the only major "woman" thing that she can't do is to have her own children, but she has all the natural plumbing to carry a donor egg to full term. She's a whole lot more "woman" than "man".

If you're thinking "what if instead of just that defective male gene, she had nothing there at all -- that's what you're saying, right", then actually having no gene there at all will usually mean she dies in the womb -- full stop. And, if she lives, she will have Turner Syndrome, which you don't want to think about, but which you're unlikely to find in what you'd consider "hot chicks".

I refer to it as Jamie Lee Curtis Syndrome.

Playing more Internet doctor again...

The rumors with Jamie Lee Curtis tend to involve AIS (Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome), where the androgen testosterone that's supposed to turn your undefined parts into guy parts is produced, but the body is (typically only somewhat) insensitive to it. There's typically some obvious gender ambiguity and some flavor of sex assignment surgery done at birth. I'm assuming from the comments in the article above about "no sex change surgery" that she wasn't put under the knife at birth.

The syndrome I'm describing above happens before you'd ever get to the testosterone being released, and would be inconsistent with Jamie Lee Curtis' natural rack (but would be consistent with a not-stupendously girlish girl not knowing she had an XY).

And of course, all of this is just rumor and innuendo:

http://www.snopes.com/movies/actors/jamie.htm

It's funny how no one ever mentions the possibility that Christopher Guest may be sterile, or Jamie Lee Curtis might "just" be infertile.

If the situation with the track runner is just a broken chromosome, than regardless of whether she's allowed to keep the medal or not, its really a shame that this was all blasted througout the world for her possible embarrassment.

Agreed.

Of course, had they said nothing, most would've assumed it was drugs or some other criminal thing. There might be some "sunshine" rules that the competitors buy into, to avoid impropriety.

I don't know why this piques my interest. Actually, I probably do know why -- it's because of this particularly creepy episode of House:

http://housemd-guide.com/season2/213skindeep.php

describing Complete AIS (which isn't what I think the track runner has, but it's in the same universe of weirdness).

Thanks for the info Mxy, but thats still weird no matter how you explain it. The world will still never be the same for me.