Opinion - Letters to the Editor   

Award for athlete

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi deserves praise for his gesture in presenting a cash award to S. Santhi, who won the silver medal in the Doha Asian Games, notwithstanding the fact that she was stripped of her medal after she failed a gender test.

P. Palaniswamy,
Male

Santhi was brought up as a normal girl and has won many medals in national and international events. About one in 60,000 women are known to carry a Y chromosome. In l985, Spanish hurdler Maria Patino failed a mandatory sex test. Ignoring a warning not to compete from the president of the Spanish athletic federation, she won her event in an athletic meet. She was thrown out of the Spanish national team, stripped of her titles and barred from competition.

Two-and-a-half years later, she was reinstated by the International Amateur Athletics Federation.

M.M. Gurbaxani,
Bangalore

At the State and national levels, a gender test is seldom done. The OCA medical panel took up Santhi's case following a protest. If she is not eligible to compete in the women's category, she gets undue advantage over the others.

Rama Gopalakrishnan,
Chennai

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