The influence of testosterone upon sporting performance

As regular readers will be aware – and to the frustration of some including our marketing department – one of the features of the Rust is its deliberate lack of a particular political or other stance on any subject including the pursuit of popularity or commercial success.

It is what it is – a portal or hub via which those beyond the first flush of youth can offer their observations and views upon modern life.

If I didn’t know better I might seek to claim for the Rust an affinity with the approach of Andy Warhol, a high priest of Pop Art: arguably, those who question his status as a great artist, or even whether he possessed an artistic vision at all, have already missed the point.

He observed and reflected aspects of life with studied detachment, leaving the onlooker to decide the significance (if any) – artistic or otherwise – for themselves.

All that said, it is to an extent inevitable that our contributors’ stage in life tends to influence their views.

We need offer no apology for that. We are what we are. Somewhere along the line a sense of humour helps too, whatever stage of life’s journey one has reached.

Which brings me to the latest development on the vexed subject of gender in sport – and indeed its non-binary aspects including transgender rights.

In the modern politically-correct world celebration of diversity is understandably celebrated and indeed lionised.

But inevitably it can clash with notions of fairness in competition and the limits that arguably ought to exist upon taking an advantage of a naturally-occurring feature or ability.

Nobody would protest at someone with genetically-inbuilt height, weight or ‘fast-twitch muscle’ advantages participating in an elite sprint race.

Nor, for example, at someone with an excessive degree of inherited ball-game skill taking up a racquet sport, simply because this would give them an unfair advantage over those less gifted.

And yet when to come to non-binary athletes or sports people – especially those who were once male but have made a deliberate choice to become female – or indeed those who (on the gender spectrum) were born in some middle half-way position, some complicated issues arise.

World sports administrators have been wrestling with these for a long while now and I sympathise with them as they try simultaneously to balance their support for inclusivity and political correctness on the one hand and yet also ‘fair competition’ on the other.

The case of Caster Semenya is perhaps the most high-profile example of all. Whilst one feels great sympathy for her, I also feel that the rights of female athletes to fair competition also need to be protected.

The Semenya battleground has inevitably become medical science, as it was always going to be.

After a period of “no contest” in boxing terms (i.e. not so much a draw as an inconclusive result), it seems that at last we may be nearing a definitive position.

See here for a piece by Hannah Devlin on the most recent scientific findings, as appears today upon the website of – THE GUARDIAN