Saturday, January 10, 2009

CAF Initiatng Gender Testing Before 2010 Africa Women's Cup

Equatorial Guinea is probably still celebrating the championship they won in the Africa Women's Cup soccer tournament two months ago and the Nigerians are still hatin'.

Instead of admitting that the five time defending champion Super Falcons played piss poor soccer in that tournament and were lucky to finish third in it, they found every excuse to try to explain away their loss, including filing protests accusing the Equatorial Guinea team of playing 'men', especially before their 1-0 tournament semifinal loss.

The protests were eventually dismissed by the CAF, the governing body of African soccer, but probably because the 2010 tournament will be a qualifier for the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup, they will institute gender testing for that tournament.

However, there are problems with that approach. There's the 'where do you classify intersex people quandary? FIFA considers you female if you're menstruating, even if you have ambiguous genitalia. The IOC dropped gender testing in 1999 because it was embarrassingly inconsistent but Olympic and IAAF rules allow for gender tests if an athlete's gender is challenged by another athlete or team, or event officials.

The most famous case was Polish sprinter Ewa Klobukowska, who failed one during the 1964 Tokyo Games but gave birth to a healthy baby four years later.

Then there's the humiliation and potential psychological damage that a positive test could cause. After India's Santhi Soundararajan was stripped of a silver medal after a failed test in the 2006 Asian Games, she attempted suicide.

During the whole tournament the whining from Nigerian and Cameroon that Equatorial Guinea was playing with 'men' was insulting and deafening. Y'all just mad that they stepped up their game for this tournament and y'all didn't. Equatorial Guinea's captain Anona Genevova scored more goals in the entire tournament than the Super Falcons did as a team.

Nigeria and Cameroon, you lost, get over it. It would be deliciously ironic if the gender testing that you demanded be initiated by the CAF catches a few Cameroonian players and some Super Falcons instead.

2 comments:

the young people's professor said...

Thanks for your comments and kind words Monica. And of course, yes, you can use any of my images.

Warm regards,
Frank

Monica Roberts said...

Appreciate it Frank.

Hey, One of these days we'll have to sit down and figure out if we're actaully related ;)