Karen Pickering wants a level playing field

Male athletes aiming to win Olympic medals without resorting to banned drugs could soon have a new, legal way of gaining an advantage over their rivals — wear a dress for two years and then compete as a woman.

This week the IOC will decide whether to amend its rules to allow transsexuals who have undergone a sex change to compete under their new gender.

That proposal is controversial enough, since most sex changes are man-to-woman and critics say those transsexuals will retain unfair advantages of height and strength over female opponents.

The IOC is, however, preparing to go one stage further and allow transsexuals who have not had sex-change surgery to compete under their new gender so long as they have “lived as a woman” for two years.

Supporters of the proposal argue that it is about “equal opportunities” and “human rights”, but many senior figures in athletics say that it will put female athletes at a severe disadvantage if they are forced to compete against “men dressed as women”.

The IOC’s move follows a recommendation from its medical commission. The IOC has refused to discuss the issue until after its executive board meets in Athens on Saturday.

The proposed changes would require the IOC to re-introduce gender-testing for athletes, a practice that it phased out before the Sydney Olympics in 2000 on the grounds of sexual discrimination.

The IOC’s decision will be eagerly awaited by Claire Ashton, formerly a West Mercia policeman called Tony Ashton, who is involved in a legal battle with the British governing body for time-trial cycling, claiming she was sexually discriminated against by being asked to take a gender test.

Ashton, who has had full sex-change surgery, has postponed her action until after the government’s new Gender Recognition Bill becomes law.

Lord Moynihan, the British Conservatives’ spokesman on sport, who won a rowing silver medal at the Moscow Olympics in 1980, said that unless the IOC established clear medical criteria for sex-change athletes, the new rules would make a mockery of sport.

He told The Sunday Telegraph: “If they don’t have any criteria then there will be nothing to stop a top 100 m runner saying ‘I am a woman’, and turning up without even having surgery.

“In the extreme position of someone like Dwain Chambers wishing to run the 100 m as a woman, it is obvious that he is not a woman, but there has to be some sort of panel to which such a case would have to be referred.”

The proposed changes are causing alarm among sportswomen. Karen Pickering, a British swimmer and the Commonwealth 200m freestyle champion, said that she would only feel comfortable about competing against a transsexual if it could be proved that she was not gaining an unfair advantage. “Nobody wants to be prejudiced but you have to maintain a level playing field.”

Craig Reedie, the chairman of the British Olympic Association, said: “There is clearly an unfairness in a situation whereby somebody born a man changes to a woman but retains much of the man’s physical strength.”