An Olympic Trial: Dealing With Transgender Athletes
by NPR Staff
Listen to the Story
May 24, 2012
http://www.npr.org/2012/05/24/153589689/transgender-athlete-competes-for-olympic-spotA central question of gender and sports is facing officials as they prepare for London's Summer Olympics: In a system that segregates athletic competition by sex for reasons of fairness, where do transgender athletes fit?
Take, for example, Keelin Godsey, the first openly transgender contender for the U.S. Olympic team. Last month, Godsey qualified for the women's track and field Olympic trials in the hammer throw.
Godsey was born female, identifies as male, and competes in the female division — a situation that attracted the attention of writer Pablo Torre and Sports Illustrated. As Torre tells NPR's Michel Martin, cases such as Godsey's might present "the most thorny question" for sports organizers.
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May 28, 2012
The Transgender Athlete
Playing fields have long been segregated on the basis of sex. But what happens to the athletes whose physiology doesn't match their gender identity? Against whom do they compete? What obstacles do they face? And how are they being treated by sports' governing bodies?
PABLO S. TORRE, DAVID EPSTEIN
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1198744/1/index.htmIf you've never seen the hammer throw up close, especially during a New England winter, the most arresting part of every heave is the conclusion: how hardened earth erupts when the metal comet splits the ground. Weighing nearly nine pounds with a four-foot wire tail, the stainless-steel ball is menacing enough that airports ban it from carry-on luggage. And on a brisk February morning in Williamstown, Mass., every toss by Keelin Godsey offers further proof of its violence.
At 5'9" and 186 pounds, Godsey is tautly muscular. He wears glasses and is dressed in black from his sneakers to his knit cap, which sheathes his blond, spiky hair. Over and over, from in front of a chain-link backstop, he grips the hammer's handle and whirls in accelerating circles until it's no longer clear whether he is spinning the ball or the ball is spinning him. His target distance, 226'4½", is out on a gravel path beyond the frost-covered craters. That's the qualifying standard for the London Games—a mark Godsey finally surpassed last month (with a throw of 227'8") at a meet in Walnut, Calif. With a top three finish at the trials in Eugene, Ore., in June, he will realize his lifelong dream: to make the U.S. women's Olympic team.
