MORE elite female athletes support competitors with differences of sexual development (DSD) being allowed in women’s sports than oppose it, according to a new study.

People with a DSD do not always develop along typical male-female lines. Their hormones, genes and reproductive organs may be a mix of male and female characteristics.

Researchers said 43 per cent of 147 athletes felt it was fair for DSD athletes to take part in women’s contact sports and sports reliant on physical capacity such as sprinting, compared to 36 per cent who said it was unfair.

However, views varied significantly between athletes in current Olympic sports compared with those from sports recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) but which did not feature at the Paris Games last summer.

A small majority of current Olympic athletes (51.1 per cent) supported a separate category for DSD athletes in contact sports and those heavily reliant on physical capacity, while 75 per cent of current Olympic athletes at world-class level said it was unfair for DSD athletes to compete in their particular sport. 

The DSD attitudes study published in the European Journal of Sport Science today is part of the Differences in Sexual Development and Transgender Elite Sports (DATES) project involving Swansea University’s Applied Sports Science Technology and Medicine Research Centre (A-STEM), Manchester Metropolitan University’s Institute of Sport and the University of Chester.

The 63 respondents from the Olympic-recognised sports category were the most supportive of DSD athletes being involved in female sports, with over 60 per cent saying it was very fair or fair to include them in contact and physical capacity sports. Just over 87 per cent of these respondents competed in “flying disc sports,” the report said. All 147 respondents reported they were born female.

The study also found more than two-thirds of all athletes — 67 per cent — felt it was unethical to require DSD athletes to medicate for eligibility.