Michelle Dumaresq Raises Hell

Outside Magazine

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Michelle Raises Hell (cont.)

THERE IS NO SIMPLE indicator that differentiates a born female from a hormonally and surgically altered one. What makes most girls girls is their XX chromosomes. But some women possess XY chromosomes while retaining the physical characteristics of women. And some produce excessive male hormones, a condition known as congenital adrenal hyperplasia that can bring medical problems and athletic benefits. Eight female athletes at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta reportedly "suffered" from CAH—and were approved for competition.

Transgender dustups in sports are older than gender-reassignment surgery, which was pioneered in Copenhagen in 1952. In the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, Polish sprinter Stella Walsh won a gold medal in the 100-meter race; four years later, in Berlin, she took silver. In 1980, Walsh, by then a naturalized American citizen, was shot and killed in Cleveland in a botched robbery. An autopsy revealed that she was a he. In the 1940s, Czech runner Zdenka Koubkova and German high jumper Dora Ratjen were banned from Olympic competition after doctors found them to be hermaphrodites; both lived the rest of their lives as men. By 1966, a chromosomal scan called the Barr body test took some of the guesswork out of the gender quandary. After a 1968 test determined that Austria's Erika Schineggar, the women's world downhill-ski champion, was chromosomally male, she underwent months of surgeries before returning to competition—as Erik.

The most famous transgender athlete is physician and tennis player Renée Richards, formerly Richard Raskin. In 1977, the New York State Supreme Court ruled that Richards could compete as a woman in the U.S. Open. (She lost in the first round, though she reached the doubles finals; ultimately, in 1981, she returned to her medical practice.) Richards, a 70-year-old pediatric ophthalmologist in New York, is not optimistic about Dumaresq's quest for acceptance. " 'Cease and desist,' I would tell her," she told a Canadian newspaper in 2002. "It's very sad for her, but that ultimate satisfaction, she will not get."

Even today, the transgender jock population largely remains a closeted one: Dumaresq claims to correspond with some 115 undercover, or "stealth," transgender athletes from all over the world, including a top NCAA women's basketball player and two women competing at a world-class level in Olympic events. "There are hundreds of athletes out there who have a trans history," she says, "but they're not telling anybody because of the implications."

Still, the rules are changing. Before the 2000 Sydney Games, the International Olympic Committee did away with sex screenings, and the Associated Press reported last November that the IOC would not ban athletes with a transgender history, provided they endure a waiting period following surgery. (IOC medical director Patrick Schamasch later denied the report, saying that no decision had been made.) This winter in the UK, a Gender Recognition Bill was being debated in the House of Lords; if it passes, a man could compete as a woman simply by claiming to be one. But in January 2004, bucking the trend, the International Volleyball Federation announced that while it would no longer conduct gender tests, transgender people would remain ineligible.

"It's definitely unfair," says one Montreal doctor. "There is inequality of force between a transgender and a natural female."

The most prevalent argument against transsexual women athletes is that they "grew up male," with higher levels of hemoglobin and testosterone, and greater lung capacity, heart capacity, and muscle mass. "There is inequality of force between a transgender female and a natural female," says Dr. Pierre Assalian, psychiatrist-in-chief at the human sexuality unit at Montreal General Hospital. "It's definitely unfair."

Less quantifiable attributes also play a part. "Males growing up with testosterone are inevitably more driven, challenging, competitive than women," says Dr. Oliver Robinow, of Vancouver Hospital's sex medicine clinic. "This decreases with their change in hormones," he says, "but does not disappear."

Michael Dumaresq stood six feet tall and weighed 210 pounds. Although still big, as female downhillers go, Michelle insists she is all woman. Fat has moved to her hips and buttocks, thanks to daily doses of estrogen and progesterone, and she estimates she's lost 30 percent of her muscle mass. She stops taking hormones four or five days a month to replicate a menstrual cycle. "The first two years are really tough," she says, "especially the mood swings. Men just don't understand what it's like."

Tell that to the girls. The grumbling began with Michelle's first race, a May 2001 B.C. Cup event in Mission, in which she beat every pro. The next month, at a B.C. Cup race in Kelowna, she did it again. By her third race, when she spanked every pro but one, the women were livid, including two of her former mentors, 2001 national champion Cassandra Boon and her 2002 successor, Sylvie Allen, now both retired. Several racers filed complaints with Cycling B.C., the provincial arm of the Canadian Cycling Association, which, under the umbrella of the Union Cycliste Internationale, suspended her license.

Over the winter, the UCI reconvened, and in April 2002 reinstated her—as a pro. At Dumaresq's first race, in Mission, Cassandra Boon handed the race commissioner a petition signed by a dozen riders of both sexes. He denied the protest; Dumaresq won the race.

In an appeal to the UCI dated June 27, 2002, Sylvie Allen wrote, "We are very impressed with her strength, endurance, speed and skill—all quite good as a man, but too suspiciously impressive for a woman. It is our contention that she is not competing on a level playing field." It was the last major protest. But at the 2002 worlds, in Kaprun, Austria, Dumaresq's teammates still weren't speaking to her.

Few racers will discuss Dumaresq on the record today; the attitude, as one Canadian woman rider told me, is "Quit bitching and get off the brakes." But mountain biking is an obscure cousin in the celebrity sports family of World Cup soccer and Olympic track. Right now, sports bodies are adopting provisional "Don't ask, don't tell" gender policies. But when the first transsexual stands on the podium in the Olympic Games, the backlash will make the furor over Dumaresq look like a sandbox squabble.

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