In the history of Olympics, there are five ‘females’ who have failed the gender test.
1. Santhi Soundarajan
Indian born 27-year-old Santhi was stripped of her silver medal for the 800m at the Asian games in 2006. Santhi has lived her entire life as a female and then came the Olympics shocker. She failed a gender test, which usually includes examinations by a gynaecologist, endocrinologist, psychologist and a genetic expert after winning the silver medal. The likely cause is a condition called Androgen insensitivity syndrome, where a person has the physical characteristics of a woman but whose genetic make-up includes a male chromosome.
2. Edinanci Silva
Brazilian Edinanci was born with both themale and female sex organs. She had a surgery in the mid-90s to get rid of the male organ. According to the IOC, this made her eligible to participate in the games and she competed in Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000 and Athens in 2004. Her competitor at Sydney Olympics stated at press conference - My plan was not to grip with her, she’s - he’s - very strong,” she said. Silva gave a mouth swab to officials, which proved she was female.
3. Dora Ratjen
Berlin Olympics in 1936 saw the monopoly of Adolf Hitler who wanted to show the world the supremacy of the Aryan race - and demanded the German athletes to win. Deep voiced Ratjen was Germany’s entry for the women’s high jump. She came fourth.
4. Stella Walsh
Walsh, a Polish-American sprinter, was the fastest woman in the world at a point of time. She was born in Poland in 1911 and grew up in the United States. She lived her entire life as a woman, and even had a short-lived marriage to an American man. In 1980, Walsh was killed by mistake during an armed robbery at a shopping mall in Cleveland, Ohio. The postmortem revealed she had male genitalia, although this did not prove that she was a man as she was also found to have both male and female chromosomes, a genetic condition known as mosaicism.
5. Heidi Krieger
Another Hitler woman, Heidi, a shot putter was put on steroids and contraceptive pills by her coach. She started to gain weight, muscle and develop body hair. By 1986, aged 20, she was European champion. Her overdeveloped physique had put a huge amount of pressure on her frame, causing medical problems, while the drugs had caused mood swings, depression and resulted in at least one suicide attempt. By the mid-90s, Krieger underwent gender reassignment surgery and changed her name to Andreas.
via Guardian
