Abstract

In recent years organizations such as the International Olympic Committee have created regulations to allow those athletes who have undergone gender reassignment to compete in their chosen gender. Despite these rules, there is still a widespread belief that those athletes who have transitioned from male to female (MTF) have an inherent advantage over 46XX female competitors. Until this point, there has not been any published data, based on performances of MTF athletes, to either support or refute this belief. There are two main stumbling blocks to creating such a study: the first is to determine an appropriate metric to examine; the second is to find participants for the study. This study analyzed race times for eight MTF runners who have competed in distance races in both genders, using a mathematical model called age grading. Collectively, the age graded scores for these eight runners were essentially the same in both genders.