Ethics CasesSport

Cases · IAAF (World Athletics) / Athletics Federation of India · 2014–2018

Dutee Chand v. IAAF: Natural Testosterone and the Burden of Proof

In 2014, India's athletics federation dropped 18-year-old sprinter Dutee Chand from its Commonwealth Games team under the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) rules on hyperandrogenism, meaning naturally high testosterone in women. There was no suggestion of doping. Chand refused to take medication or undergo surgery to lower her testosterone. She appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). In July 2015, CAS suspended the rules for two years, saying the IAAF had not shown enough evidence of the size of the advantage, and allowed her to compete. The IAAF later adopted narrower rules for events from 400 meters to the mile, which did not cover Chand's sprint events. She went on to win two Asian Games silver medals in 2018. The case raises questions about the burden of proof, bodily integrity and how to define the women's category.

By Tanner Simkins, editor

Timeline

  1. Chand wins the 100 m and 200 m at the Asian Junior Athletics Championships.
  2. India's athletics federation drops her from the Commonwealth Games team under hyperandrogenism rules.
  3. She is also left out of India's Asian Games team; she appeals to CAS.
  4. CAS suspends the hyperandrogenism regulations for two years and clears Chand to compete.
  5. The IAAF adopts regulations for athletes with differences of sex development covering events from 400 m to the mile.
  6. Chand wins silver medals in the 100 m and 200 m at the Asian Games.
  7. An Indian anti-doping panel bans Chand for four years after positive tests for SARMs; an appeal is dismissed in May 2024.

The ethical issues

  • Burden of proof: who must show that natural testosterone confers a decisive advantage.
  • Bodily integrity: whether athletes can be required to undergo treatment to compete.
  • Privacy: the exposure of an athlete's medical information.
  • Defining the women's category: biology, identity and fairness.
  • Natural advantages: why some are accepted and others regulated.

Stakeholders

StakeholderInterests & obligations
Dutee ChandHer right to compete without medical intervention.
Other women athletesFair competition in the women's category.
World Athletics (IAAF)Authority to set eligibility rules.
National federationsApplying international rules to their athletes.
Athletes with differences of sex developmentDignity, privacy and eligibility.
Medical and scientific expertsEvidence on testosterone and performance.

The case

Dutee Chand was born in 1996 into a poor weaving family in Odisha, one of India’s poorest states.[1] In 2013, she became the first Indian to reach a global 100-meter final, at the World Youth Championships.[1] In 2014, she won the 100 and 200 meters at the Asian Junior Athletics Championships and hoped to run for India at the Commonwealth Games.[1][2]

Background

Chand was the third of seven children in a weaving family living below the poverty line in a village in Odisha’s Jajpur district.[1] Her early results came fast. She won bronze in the 200 meters at the 2013 Asian Championships in Pune, and that year she also became national champion in the 100 and 200 meters.[1] Before the exclusion she was hoping to qualify for the 2014 Commonwealth Games, and she was dropped from the contingent at the last minute.[1]

The process was intrusive. In the CAS proceedings, Chand said she was subjected to intrusive questioning and physical examinations, including genital examinations that she found humiliating.[1]

The rules and governance

The IAAF’s hyperandrogenism policy had been in place since 2011. It put the burden on the governing body’s own rules, not on any finding of wrongdoing: women with natural testosterone above a set threshold were ineligible for the women’s category unless they reduced it.[1][5] National federations applied the rule to selection, which is why the Athletics Federation of India, not the IAAF, dropped her.[1] Chand was able to challenge the rules directly at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the body that hears disputes over international federations’ regulations.[1][2]

The CAS ruling placed the burden of proof on the federation. The panel found a lack of evidence that natural testosterone increased female athletic performance to the degree that would justify exclusion, and gave the IAAF two years to produce it.[1][5] The case therefore turned on evidence, not on whether sex-based categories are legitimate.

The exclusion

Weeks before the Games, the Athletics Federation of India dropped her from the team. Under IAAF rules on hyperandrogenism, women whose natural testosterone exceeded a set level could not compete in the women’s category unless they lowered it through medication or surgery. Tests had shown that Chand’s natural testosterone was above the limit. She was also left out of India’s team for the Asian Games.[1] There was no suggestion that she had doped.[1]

She refused medical treatment to lower her testosterone.[4] “I want to remain who I am and compete again,” she said in 2014. Her appeal asked why she should be forced to have surgery when her condition was natural and she was not ill.[3][4] The stakes were not hypothetical. According to the New York Times, four young women from rural areas of developing countries who were flagged for high testosterone at the 2012 London Olympics later had surgery, plus further procedures that were not required for them to return to competition.[3] Represented free of charge by a Canadian law firm, she appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, becoming the first athlete to challenge the regulations.[1][2]

The ruling

In an interim award dated July 24, 2015, and made public on July 27, CAS suspended the IAAF’s hyperandrogenism regulations for two years.[6] The panel found that the IAAF had not provided enough evidence about the degree of performance advantage that naturally high testosterone gives women. It said the rules would be void unless the IAAF produced better evidence.[2][5] Chand was cleared to compete immediately. CAS also urged the IAAF to create a procedure in which athletes would not be excluded as a “consequence of the natural and unaltered state of their body.”[2]

The panel’s reasoning cut both ways. Under the 2011 rules, women’s testosterone had to be below 10 nmol/L, the lower end of the male range.[3][7] The panel accepted that natural testosterone was “the best indicator of performance differences between male and female athletes.” It also praised the IAAF for acting with “conspicuous diligence and good faith.”[7] But it said it “was unable to conclude that hyperandrogenic female athletes may benefit from such a significant performance advantage that it is necessary to exclude them from competing in the female category.”[3] It added: “sex in humans is not simply binary… ‘Nature is not neat.’” Any line the IAAF drew between the categories had to be “necessary, reasonable and proportionate.”[3] The marathon world-record holder Paula Radcliffe had testified for the IAAF that high testosterone made competition “fundamentally unfair.”[3] After the ruling, Chand said, “I was humiliated for something that I can’t be blamed for.”[3] The IAAF did not file its new evidence within two years. In July 2017, with the parties’ agreement, CAS extended the suspension by two months and said the rules would be declared void if no evidence arrived by the end of September.[6]

What followed

The IAAF commissioned research, including a 2017 study that found women with the highest testosterone levels performed better in some events.[5] In 2018, it adopted new regulations for athletes with differences of sex development, but only for events from 400 meters to the mile. They required eligible athletes to reduce testosterone to compete in those events.[5] Chand’s 100- and 200-meter events were not covered. In August 2018, she won silver medals in both events at the Asian Games. Her 100-meter silver was India’s first medal in that event in 32 years, since P.T. Usha.[1] The 2018 rules led to the separate legal fight involving Caster Semenya.[5]

In 2019, Chand became the first Indian athlete to say publicly that she was in a same-sex relationship.[1]

Aftermath

Cleared to race, Chand set an Indian indoor 60-meter record in 2016. That June she broke the national 100-meter record twice in one day, in Almaty, to qualify for the Rio Olympics.[1] She became only the third Indian woman to run the Olympic 100 meters, and she competed again in Tokyo.[1] In 2016 Odisha’s chief minister appointed her to a job at the state mining corporation, saying the government wanted to give athletes financial stability.[1] In 2019 she became the first Indian woman sprinter to win gold at the World University Games.[1]

Her career then ended under a different set of rules. In December 2022, India’s National Anti-Doping Agency tested her twice out of competition in Bhubaneswar. The samples contained selective androgen receptor modulators: andarine, ostarine and ligandrol in the first, and andarine and ostarine in the second.[8] In August 2023, an anti-doping disciplinary panel banned her for four years from January 3, 2023, and disqualified her results from December 5, 2022.[8] She said the substances came from products her physiotherapist had advised her to take for groin pain. The panel accepted her account of the source but found she had not consulted a physician, checked the label or checked the prohibited list, and so had not shown the violation was unintentional.[8][9] An appeal panel dismissed her appeal in May 2024.[9] The doping case concerned prohibited substances, a separate matter from the 2015 dispute over her natural testosterone.[8][9]

The core dilemma

The IAAF said its rules protected fair competition for women. Chand said they punished her for her natural body and forced women to choose between medical treatment and their careers. When an athlete’s natural biology is said to create an advantage, who must prove what, and what can a sport ask of her?

Competing values

  • Fairness vs. inclusion: a level field against the right to compete as one is.
  • Evidence vs. precaution: requiring proof against acting on a plausible concern.
  • Bodily integrity vs. eligibility: freedom from unnecessary treatment against meeting rules.
  • Privacy vs. regulation: confidential medical information against enforcing eligibility.

Strongest arguments

For Chand: she was born and raised as a woman and did nothing wrong. Excluding her based on a single hormone, without strong evidence about its effect, and pressuring her into treatment, violated her dignity.

For the IAAF’s aim: testosterone is the main driver of performance differences between men and women. Governing bodies need some way to define the women’s category, and the 2018 rules targeted events where it said evidence was strongest.

Applying the frameworks

Justice

A justice lens asks how to balance fairness to women competitors with fairness to women like Chand, born with natural characteristics they did not choose. CAS’s insistence on evidence was a matter of procedural justice: a rule that excludes people must be justified by proof, not assumption. The lens also notes the social dimension, a rural athlete from a poor family bearing the cost of a global policy.

Rights

The rights lens centers on bodily integrity, privacy and dignity. Requiring medication or surgery to compete, and subjecting an athlete to intrusive examinations, burdens fundamental rights. Chand’s refusal to undergo treatment was an assertion of autonomy. CAS’s call to avoid excluding athletes for “the natural and unaltered state of their body” echoes that concern.

Kantian (duty)

A Kantian lens asks whether eligibility rules treat athletes as ends. Using a woman’s body as a test case for a category, without a solid evidence base, risks treating her as a means. The lens also demands consistency: if natural advantages in height or physiology are accepted, a rule singling out one natural characteristic needs a principled justification.

Walk it through: the Simple Decision Model

  1. Spot the issue. You are an Athletics Federation of India official in July 2014, told that Chand’s testosterone exceeds the IAAF threshold weeks before the Commonwealth Games. The stakeholders include Chand and her family, other Indian sprinters, competitors, the IAAF, the Sports Authority of India and the public. The codes in play are the IAAF hyperandrogenism regulations and Indian sports policy.
  2. Gather facts. What do you know about the testing process, the athlete’s consent and the evidence behind the rule? What are the risks to her privacy if news leaks?
  3. Test options. Options: (a) drop her from the team, as the rules require; (b) seek a ruling from the IAAF or CAS before deciding; (c) select her and challenge the rule. Weigh rule-following against rights and justice.
  4. Check codes and law. Does your process protect her confidentiality and dignity? Have you told her clearly about her options, including legal challenge?
  5. Decide and document. Record the medical and legal advice and every communication with the athlete.
  6. Communicate and follow up. Speak to Chand privately before any announcement, provide independent medical and legal support, and avoid public statements that reveal medical details.

What’s settled and what’s contested

  • Settled: the 2014 exclusion; the 2015 CAS suspension; the narrower 2018 rules and Chand’s later results.
  • Contested: how much natural testosterone matters in each event; whether any testosterone-based eligibility rule is fair.

Why this case matters

Chand’s appeal was the first time an athlete successfully challenged testosterone-based eligibility rules. It forced sports bodies to justify their science and shaped every case since.

Key terms

Distributive justice
Fairness in how scarce opportunities, resources, benefits and burdens are shared.
Consent and autonomy
Whether people have agreed freely and with full information, and whether their right to make their own choices is respected.
Due process
Fair procedures before a sanction: notice, a chance to respond, an impartial decision-maker and a right of appeal.
Paternalism (hard and soft)
Restricting someone’s choices for their own good. Hard paternalism overrides competent, informed adults; soft paternalism steps in when information or autonomy is compromised.

Definitions from the Ethics Cases glossary.

Discussion questions

  1. CAS required the IAAF to prove the size of the advantage from natural testosterone. Who should bear the burden of proof in eligibility cases, and why?
  2. Many athletes have natural advantages, such as height or lung capacity. Why might testosterone be treated differently?
  3. Is it ethical to require an athlete to take medication to compete when she is not ill?
  4. How should sports bodies protect the privacy of athletes whose eligibility is questioned?
  5. Chand was later unaffected by narrower rules for middle-distance events. What does that suggest about how such rules are designed?

Sources

  1. Dutee Chand — Wikipedia
  2. Dutee Chand cleared to race as IAAF suspends 'gender test' rules — BBC Sport
  3. Dutee Chand, Female Sprinter With High Testosterone Level, Wins Right to Compete — The New York Times
  4. Sprinter Dutee Chand fights ban over her testosterone level — The New York Times
  5. Sex verification in sports — Wikipedia
  6. CAS suspends the IAAF Hyperandrogenism Regulations until end of September 2017 (media release, July 28, 2017) — Court of Arbitration for Sport
  7. IAAF comments on interim award issued by the CAS on the IAAF's Hyperandrogenism Regulations — World Athletics (IAAF)
  8. Dutee Chand, India's fastest woman athlete, gets four-year dope ban — The Times of India
  9. Dutee Chand's ban upheld: ADAP dismisses appeal against four-year suspension — Sportstar