Play the Game: Day 3, part 1

Find the Play the Game 2011 website with more information, photos, video, program, etc. HERE.

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"Spornification" (photo Play the Game)

On day 3 of the conference, I followed the morning track on gender. The first session, on "the gender challenge to sport" opened with a study on the movement "from sexualization of sport to spornofication". The speakers analyzed the need for ever more provocative images of athletes. Of interest to us was the ever increasing explicit appeal of male athletes' bodies to gay men.

Next, Tine Rindum Teilmann, a member of the IOC's Women in Sport Commission and chair of the IPC Women in Sport Commission, spoke on efforts to engage sports federations in concrete steps to improve the place of women in positions of power in these institutions.

Annette Hoffmann

Finally, concrete examples of action in sport were given with the case of the legal attack on the discriminatory exclusion of women from ski jumping at the Vancouver Olympics. And in another look at Vancouver, an analysis was made of violence against women associated with ice hockey, whose culture is closely associated with team and violence.

View Part 1 and Part 2

Arne Ljungqvist

The second session concerned the "intersex challenge to sport", a subject with huge consequences for athletes. Arne Ljungqvist, Chairman of the IOC Medical Commission asked: "Is there a need for a third sex in sport?" His answer was "no".Ljungqvist is responsible for the end to "gender verification" in the IAAF and the IOC.
Georg M. Facius who followed Ljungqvist violently accused him of reinstating gender verification with the new IOC policy on intersex athletes, a claim that Ljungqvist denies, saying that the question is one not of gender verification, but of confirming eligibility of athletes to compete in women's divisions.

Kidd, Facius, Ljungqvist 

Bruce Kidd, an academic and former Olympic athlete, proposed an alternative to current biochemical-based thinking in the form of gender self-declaration.

View HERE.

Martin Hardie (photo Play the Games)

In the afternoon, I attended a session on doping, the highlight of which was a look at "Doping and surveillance - privacy rights vs. fair play practices" byNils Zurawski. He is astonished that in a society so concerned with privacy rights, the surveillance creep associated with anti-doping efforts goes almost without comment.

Other talks looked at cycling, with talks by Martin Hardie and Christophe Brissonneau with Bertrand Fincoeur.

Brissonneau and Fincoeur

A particular shocking story was told by Steven Selthoffer on the case of Claudia Pechstein.

View HERE.

Before this session, WADA was the focus of a special session, which can be viewed here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

A later session on tech doping can be viewed HERE.