The problem with the athletic competitions – or their advantage, to the spectator – is that all the rules therein are entirely arbitrary.
Women's javelin throwing is a competition where the javelin has to weight precisely 600 grams. It has to be thrown from a very particular, arbitrarily chosen position. The men's javelin is precisely 800 grams. There are lots of horribly, horribly convoluted rules that outline athletes shoes, the material and length of the lengths of stadium they run on, and so forth. You're not allowed to use certain techniques to enhance your strength – genetic surgery, steroids, and certain types of food and drugs are not allowed for use.
The competitions are not really “the fastest runner/best javelin thrower competitions”. They are competitions in how fast someone can run under controlled conditions.
So, under the rules, there is no gender, there is only sex. Male or female. Yeah, there are people who are born with testes who identify as women. There are people who identify as women and who are physically male. But the competition isn't interested in that, it's interest in the physical aspects of your body only, as it applies to running in, and winning, the competition under those very narrow and defined conditions.
It is illegal, in most sporting competitions if not all, to enhance yourself with testosterone injectors. If I used testosterone patches for additional muscle growth, I would be disqualified immediately, and I am male.
But this woman is an interesting issue. Now, I accept her as a woman in terms of what I think she is. I accept even people who were born entirely male as women, under certain circumstances. However, the question is, what should the committee do?
On one hand, this is, for all intents and purposes, a woman with a steroid factory built-in right into her body. How can one expect female competitors who are 'normal' in their make-up compete with someone like that? We can't allow the use of steroids in the competitions, of course, not only because it be impossible politically but because the whole point of the competitions is to allow 'natural' athletes to complete.
On the other hand, this woman's shape and condition IS natural. She had been born that way. If the point of the Olympic competition is 'how fast can a woman run under these conditions and without artificial enhancements', then the current answer is 'eight hundred meters, 1 minute, fifty-five seconds'.
Maybe the answer is to give her her medal but ban such athletes hereafter? I do not know.
However, I do not think the lady has cheated in the same sense as someone who uses doping has cheated.
