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Coe's comments follow Tuesday's meeting in
London with Athletics South Africa president Aleck Skhosana in
which the concerns of ASA over the new ruling were discussed.
ASA and South African double Olympic and triple world 800 metres
champion Caster Semenya have both separately appealed to CAS to
have the new regulations that limit the levels of
naturally-occurring testosterone in female athletes set aside.
Coe and Skhosana met to clarify their positions and with neither
side willing to budge they have declared that CAS is the best
body to rule on the dispute.
"We will support our athletes on the grounds that the
regulations discriminate against certain female athletes on the
basis of natural physical characteristics and/or sex," Skhosana
said in a media release from the IAAF on Wednesday.
He added that ASA and Semenya have the support of the South
African government and the country's Olympic Committee.
But Coe says there will be no easing of the regulations, set to
be introduced on Nov. 1, as the IAAF believe they are the
fairest solution to a tricky challenge facing the sport.
"We need to create competition categories within our sport that
ensures that success is determined by talent, dedication and
hard work, rather than by other factors that are not considered
fair or meaningful, such as the enormous physical advantages
that an adult has over a child, or a male athlete has over a
female athlete," Coe said.
"We therefore need to come up with a fair solution for
intersex/DSD (differences of sexual development) athletes
wishing to compete in the female category, which is what the new
regulations set out to do, based on the evidence the IAAF has
gathered about the degree of performance benefit that such
intersex/DSD athletes get from their higher levels of
circulating testosterone."
The IAAF said its decision was based on peer-reviewed studies
and observation by scientists which showed that females with
above-normal or male equivalent levels of testosterone had up to
a 12 percent performance advantage over fellow female athletes.
Testosterone is a hormone that increases muscle mass, strength
and haemoglobin, which affects endurance.
(Reporting By Nick Said; Editing by Amlan Chakraborty)
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