Of the 156 golfers entered in last week’s PGA championship tournament, only one—53-year-old former champ John Daly, was permitted to ride an electric cart to traverse the hilly 7,459-yard (4.2-mile) course. Because, the PGA’s American with Disabilities Act committee ruled, Daly has an arthritic knee.
Was that fair?
“Well,” 15-time major tournament champion Tiger Woods said, “I walked on a broken leg, so….” Woods was referring to the 2008 U.S. Open, which he won while playing with a stress fracture in his leg and a torn knee ligament.
Given that a core principle of sports is the so-called level playing field—theoretically a pure meritocracy, all competitors held to the same standards—there are some tricky dilemmas that are not so easily dealt with. Try this one:
Because two-time Olympic women’s 800-meter champion Caster Semenya of South Africa has a rare disorder of sexual development that produces high naturally-occurring levels of testosterone, she has been ruled ineligible in women’s events from 400 meters to a mile.
The international Court of Arbitration for Sport determined that Semenya’s condition provides a significant advantage in speed and endurance. And its not-so-great compromise is that Semenya may compete against men or in intersex categories not obviously available. Or she—and the tiny number of women with her condition—must reduce her testosterone levels either with drugs or surgery. (She is allowed to compete against women in other distances and has entered a 3,000-meter race at Stanford University next month.)
Not fair, Semenya said.
“Discriminatory,” the court in fact admitted. But “necessary, reasonable and proportionate” as a means of being fair to her female competitors.
All right: Define “fair.” Sameness? (Must Semenya have the same XX chromosome makeup as the female majority to be included in that group?) Deservedness? (Was John Daly entitled to special consideration because of his bad wheel?)
How about need?
In 2007, Oscar Pistorius of South Africa argued he should not have been excluded from running 400-meter Olympic qualifying events just because he had no legs. A double-amputee, Pistorius was producing times just a tick slower than the best able-bodied athletes in the world by using carbon-fiber artificial legs. Before he eventually was cleared for Olympic competition, there actually was some concern that Pistorius’ spring-like prostheses gave him an edge over runners with real legs.
Was that a worry about sore-loser complaints? Or the reasonable anxiety of well-meaning fairness-doctrine guardians so often confronted with performance-enhancing drugs, doctored equipment and other dastardly fudging?
For the equity police, there are no easy answers. Even well-intentioned drug testing—which has been used in Olympic sports for a half-century but came much, much later to American football, baseball and basketball pros—can only monitor chemistry. Not morality. What about doping sabotage? Inadvertent ingestion of a banned substance? Imperfect science?
“It’s a deep philosophical question,” swimming official John Leonard told me years ago. “Maybe we should say, ‘The hell with it. Let them use what they want and let’s just compete.’ But that’s not sport. That’s war. When you use any means available to win, that’s war. When you have rules that you agree to, to make things as equitable as possible, that’s sport.”
Still, “as equitable as possible” might not cover all aspects of genetics. Given all the gray areas, the incalculable bits of individuality, can even sincere attempts at sports justice truly balance the scales?
Julian Savulescu, a biomedical ethics professor based in Australia, posted an online proposal suggesting that, since Caster Semenya’s testosterone levels were natural and not the result of attempted cheating, she should remain eligible and her competitors should be allowed to add synthetic testosterone to “reduce any advantage Semenya may have.”
Problem solved. Cut the baby in half. (And golf carts for all.)