– Are you a good one? – You look like a good guy. – He’s a good one. These are some of the comments star striker Barbra Banda (22) has received on Instagram in recent days. She is one of the players who has measured too high testosterone levels to participate in this year’s African Championship. Even though she was as late as during the Olympics last year when she scored a hat trick in two games in a row. This summer, the star shot is connected to the Spanish big club Real Madrid, but she will not be allowed to play for semi-final-ready Zambia during the African Championship. According to Human Rights Watch, Banda was under pressure to carry out a “gender verification procedure”. “Such gender testing procedures are manifestly human rights violations since they are stigmatizing, stereotypical and discriminatory.” write Human Rights Watch on its pages. For several years, there has been controversy over shoulders over the fact that teams used male football players disguised as women in the African Championship, writes the independent website The Conversation. Therefore, the African Football Confederation (CAF) chose to introduce testosterone tests before this year’s tournament, something that has proven to be at least as controversial as the previous shoulders. The tests are used to verify gender and for the organizer to decide whether female practitioners with high testosterone have an unfair advantage. 10 players banned In total, the testing has led to 10 players not being allowed to participate after registering too high testosterone levels, according to media reports. – It has proven to be very difficult to set a clear limit for participation in the women’s class, and this is a great challenge for top sports internationally, says Håvard B. Øvregård, senior adviser for value work in the Norwegian Sports Confederation. According to the IOC, criteria must be based on what the research says about the physical effect in the various sports, but there is a limit with research and different opinions about what affects performance and how much. Among other things, this has led to quite large differences in what criteria the sports have seen, says Øvregård. CHALLENGE: It is very difficult to set a limit, says Øvregård. Photo: Anders Fehn / news The question of transgender people in sports is a topic that has increasingly been forced to take a stand on, but it has been a controversial issue for many years. – Until the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996, there was mandatory gender testing of all female athletes in the Olympics. It was very controversial, and it was a big international campaign to get rid of it, since many saw it as degrading for women, Øvregård told about the practice that was terminated after the games in the United States. – They put too much emphasis on testosterone levels The gender testing one has introduced in the African Championship, has mostly gone beyond Zambia, which has had to do without players like Banda, Racheal Nachula and Racheal Kundananji during the tournament. Nevertheless, they beat Senegal on Wednesday night and are ready for the semi-finals, which also means that the country has acquired its very first World Cup ticket. But the Zambian Football Association has not forgotten its omitted players and is working to change the regulations around testosterone levels. In my opinion, CAF’s regulations are too strict. “The case of Barbra (Banda) is just one example, but the bigger picture is to see how these rules can become more responsible for the general situation, not just for Zambia,” Zambia’s head of communications, Sydney Mungala, told ESPN. HARBOR: Barbra Banda is not allowed to exercise her livelihood due to the tests. Photo: KOHEI CHIBAHARA / AFP – Many players can be affected by these rules, and football is their livelihood. I think the CAF rules are much stricter (than the rules in the Olympics), and they place too much emphasis on testosterone levels, says Mungala. CAF later denied that they were the ones testing Banda. – There is no such decision from CAF’s medical committee, CAF’s communications director Lux September replied to the shoulders. In 2019, the International Athletics Federation (WA) introduced new rules that define a maximum testosterone level for female middle-distance runners. The limit applies to participation in the exercises between 400 meters and one English mile. The immediate consequence was that the best 800-meter runner in the world, Caster Semenya, could no longer compete, unless she started medication to reduce testosterone levels in her body. She appealed to the highest court of the sport CAS, but lost. Not willing to take medication The rules of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) were less strict than CAFs during last summer’s Olympics, and therefore Banda was able to show off with the national team uniform. The IOC’s framework was further updated in November 2021 and allowed the various special federations to decide for themselves whether athletes have a disproportionate advantage over competitors in their own sport. The International Football Association (Fifa) encourages such tests if there is a suspicion of the player’s gender. – There has been gradually more knowledge in this area, at the same time as the research is quite diverse. The IOC now believes that a general criterion related to testosterone levels across sports is too poor a framework to apply to all sports, among other things since testosterone is more crucial in some sports than others, explains Øvregård in NIF. But to participate in this year’s Africa Championships, the star striker and at least two of her teammates were offered to go on hormone-lowering medication. – Our doctors included the players, and they were not willing to go through it. I think there are possible side effects, Mungala told ESPN. – When the players did not choose to go that route and use that opportunity, we decided that they could not be included in the squad for the tournament, he explains.
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Football star Barbra Banda created Olympic history – now she is banned for medical reasons – news Sport – Sports news, results and broadcast schedule
