This week world swimming’s governing body FINA voted in new guidelines that establish one of the strictest rules against transgender participation in all of sport.

The new rule prohibits transgender women from competing in international women’s events unless they began medical treatments to suppress production of testosterone before going through one of the early stages of puberty, or by age 12, whichever occurred later.


Our guest is Joanna Harper, a competitive runner who transitioned a number of years ago, and in the years since then she’s become one of the leading voices in this area as a medical physicist, a researcher and as an advisor to many of the international sports federations. We ask Joanna what advantages and disadvantages trans women have compared to their rivals, if testosterone suppression is the solution to balancing out the advantages, if grassroots sport is where the debate really lies given the lack of trans women making it in elite sport, and why it is that sport has become the battleground for a wider debate about trans rights.

We also discuss Brooks Koepka’s masterclass in obfuscation before his defection this week to LIV Golf, and the John Stockton trip to Ireland that Ken definitely didn’t just dream up.

 

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