Introduction
We present a video statement of María José Martínez Patiño (former elite athlete, now professor at the University of Vigo, Spain), as shown at the event “Zwi:schen:räume – Gender Diversity in Science and Sport” on December 3, 2025, at Haus Eden in Lübeck. We also provide her full, unabridged statement, which has been written for the video and translated from Spanish.
To provide some context: This was the opening statement of a public event exploring sex diversity and gender justice in sports. Moderated by Juliane Scholz (Science Communication, CRC 1665 ‘Sexdiversity’), the discussion brought together perspectives from biology, social sciences, medicine and humanities that shape current debates about fairness in sport. Dennis Krämer and Lina von Petersdorff started with two short talks, which set the stage for a panel featuring Nadine Hornig and Olaf Hiort, both members of the CRC.
María José Martínez Patiño was a hurdler in the Spanish elite team. She was dismissed after a competition that would have set her up for participation at the 1988 Summer Olympic games in Seoul – for failing a sex test. Now she is a professor at the University of Vigo (Spain), and is directing the Center for Olympic Studies and Research. She is internationally known for her open and courageous advocacy against the injustices of sex verification procedures in elite sports. As one of the first athletes to speak out publicly, she highlighted that complete androgen insensitivity (CAIS), despite an XY chromosome set, does not provide a competitive advantage. Her work continues to influence debates on fairness, inclusion, and self-determination in sport.
We thank Maria Martinez Patino for the permission to share this statement.
My Fight for Fairness: An Athlete’s Perspective on DSD and the Science of Sex Testing (Full length statement)
Hello everyone, it is a pleasure for me to accept Juliane Scholz’s invitation to share with you all my experience as an athlete in the 1980s and 1990s and how the sports regulations of that time deeply affected me, not only in my life as an athlete, but also on a personal level.
No one chooses their chromosomes, no one chooses their hormonal levels, and no one chooses to have their name, their condition, their genetics, and their medical records splattered all over the media, where everyone, without any real understanding, starts questioning whether a person is a man or a woman.
Currently, we are doing something wrong, because we are failing—politically, institutionally, and even socially, to care for and protect our athletes, ultimately our citizens who compete at an elite level, from criticism and public scrutiny whenever the media sensationalizes a case of an athlete whose chromosomes or hormone levels are deemed “inadequate” to participate in women’s competitions.
Bit by bit, we have let everyone to have an opinion on medical matters, when the only people who can help or have the right to speak openly and state the facts as they are, should be medical specialists. Not politicians, not journalists, and least of all sports officials.
It should be doctors who have the voice and the authority, and within medicine, the world’s leading experts in differences of sex development, which is such a wide-ranging concept encompassing genetics, endocrinology, internal medicine, gynecology and many more. This must be addressed by a serious, rigorous multidisciplinary team.
You have invited me here because I was the pioneer who challenged outdated sports regulations, rules that did not align with the scientific advances of that time. Sports authorities turned their backs on scientists‘ recommendations, who said they could not use chromosome testing to determine an athlete’s sex.
Does it seem right to you that we still talk about “sex testing”, “femininity control” nowadays? This is how they decide which woman is eligible or not to participate in women’s events. In my case, some doctors in Japan decided in 1985 that I was not woman enough because of my XY chromosomes, barring me from taking part in women’s competitions at the World University Championship in Kobe 40 years ago. And they did not let me participate. I had to claim an injury to explain my absence in that championship.
In my case, the press in my country decided it would make a great headline for a major newspaper to announce that ‘Spain’s best hurdler has chromosomes that do not belong to her’ and claiming I had chromosomes that belong to a man. In my case it was deemed better to expel one of Spain’s top athletes from her training facility, to tell her to go home because having those chromosomes made it inappropriate to keep training and competing in athletics with other women.
But they were wrong about me.
I knew I had the entire sports world in my country against me, and that I had no support to keep fighting. I had lost everything. My scholarships, my residency, my partner, my records, and my titles, but I had not lost my will to fight, I never doubted I was a woman, and I have never doubted my status despite my chromosomes saying otherwise. I only had to look in the mirror to know who I was, and how wrong they were. I had nothing to hide, and nothing left to lose.
During my two terrible years of fighting, I encountered someone I will always remember: Dr. Albert de la Chapelle, a Finnish genetics specialist, Professor emeritus at Ohio State University in the U.S., who encouraged me to fight to change the rules, and expose and tell everyone the injustice done to me. Then there was the Swedish Professor Arne Lungqvist, head of the International Association of Athletics Federations‘ Medical Commission in 1988, who defended my case before the Athletics Federation, and who presented all the medical evidence proving I was a woman. They understood that a mistake was being made in my case, and in many other female athletes‘ cases. Genetic testing or a set of chromosomes do not determine who is a man or a woman. At least, in my case, it did not.
Having Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS), is having a genetic condition where the body’s tissues do not respond to androgens like testosterone. This means that, even with an XY karyotype (male genotype), tissues cannot react to androgens, resulting in the absence of male physical traits, and the presence of female characteristics. I had no athletic advantage, and I won the battle. Despite everyone being against me, they had to reinstate my records, my titles, and my rightful status.
This was the key that two years later made me eligible again to participate in women’s events. I had no athletic advantage whatsoever to compete in women’s competitions. I could run with other women because I am a woman. I have never had a single doubt about this, and many years later I remain the same girl, the same woman I have always been. My journey has been complicated and difficult. In that battle, I lost my passion as an athlete. I had spent so much energy proving my condition that returning to being the athlete I once was proved extremely hard. I returned to competing and winning. But I no longer had the same fire, and I knew my sports career was nearing its end.
Today, I hold a PhD in Sports Science, serve as an advisor to the International Olympic Committee’s medical and scientific commission, and most importantly, I am an advocate for women’s sports and fair play. I would not have fought so hard if I knew my condition gave me any athletic advantage. I have always been just like any other female athlete. I was not the best, but one who achieved her goals with the same hard work as any other woman. Training and sacrificing hard every day.
I have paved the way for other women now competing in elite sports who, like me, have no athletic advantage despite genetic conditions that may differ from female development. Yet in 2025, controversy persists. Fueled by political, sporting, and social agendas, but always driven by people with profound ignorance and keen to offer heavily biased perspectives lacking scientific basis.
A scientific approach is needed to provide solutions, and it is necessary to state loud and clear that this situation is a medical-genetic condition requiring respect and knowledgeable handling. Crucially, we cannot conflate personal identity decisions, as with transgender athletes, with a very specific medical condition, such as DSD. This mix is not good for anyone and only creates social confusion, does not help improve regulations, and harms women who do not have, nor have ever had any advantage over women with XX chromosome.
Only through science, understanding and the support of international experts like Dr. Olaf Hiort and his team, along with many other scientists, can we develop the necessary approach to help the new generations. In Europe, our citizens must be protected, and the European Parliament must address this issue unequivocally, because DSD cases will persist, and every girl, whether Norwegian, British, German, Spaniard or French needs our support and our knowledge. They need our outstretched hand to make their lives easier. Now and always.
My fight has made me a global reference, but only through knowledge, and through a firm, serious voice, can we ensure no girl, no female athlete in Europe or worldwide endures the shame and the sorrow of being singled out for having chromosomes that do not match their development, or of being told that your hormone levels do not match the standards of other women. Don’t athletes have the right to protect their privacy? Debate forums are necessary, all knowledge is necessary, and the firmness and rigor in our studies and research will be the solution so that we are all on the right side of history. We must keep fighting, to grow more empathetic, more humane every day with people who may be different. We were born different, yet we have developed like any other human being, shaped by genetics that were assigned to us and that we cannot choose. This will be our challenge.
María José Martínez Patiño
Translation provided by Carolina Gomez.
