The Megyn Kelly Show - August 15, 2024


Deep Dive: The Science of Protecting Women's Sports From Men, and the Olympics Boxing Controversy | Ep. 862


Episode Stats

Length

29 minutes

Words per Minute

177.24281

Word Count

5,252

Sentence Count

285

Misogynist Sentences

17

Hate Speech Sentences

16


Summary

In this special episode of The Megyn Kelly Show, host Meghan Kelly takes a hard look at the controversy surrounding the two male Olympic boxers who won gold medals competing against women. Her guest is Ross Tucker, an expert in sports science who is also a consultant to World Rugby, the governing body of rugby, and has advised the association on sex eligibility in that sport.


Transcript

00:00:00.460 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at New East.
00:00:11.700 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and this deep dive special episode.
00:00:17.260 Today, we are taking a hard look into the controversy surrounding the two male Olympic
00:00:22.240 boxers who won gold medals competing against women. My guest today is Ross Tucker. He's an
00:00:28.620 expert in sports science. He's also a consultant to World Rugby, the official governing body of
00:00:33.720 rugby, and has advised the association on sex eligibility in that sport. Tucker has taken an
00:00:40.280 in-depth look at the Olympic boxing scandal and has been explaining the science behind it on his
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00:01:44.960 may apply. Ross, welcome to the show. Hi, Megan. Thank you. So this thing completely exploded to
00:01:52.600 the point where a lot of people are out there saying, I don't know what to believe. You know,
00:01:57.180 the IOC just keeps telling me that they're female and that somehow it's misogynistic to say they're
00:02:02.800 not female. And yet I hear reports about the International Boxing Association. And so the
00:02:07.920 average citizen may be walking around out there saying, I guess we'll just never know. I guess
00:02:11.800 they're women. To which you respond what? That's, I suppose what one would have to say is that we
00:02:19.460 don't 100% know because none of the parties who can confirm it with beyond any reasonable doubt at
00:02:25.820 all are saying exactly what they know. And so to some degree, you choose whether you believe the
00:02:31.540 International Boxing Association and the series of events going back to 2022, 2023, when these two
00:02:38.140 boxers were disqualified from world championships fights for failing what they called their eligibility
00:02:43.840 tests. And then you arrive in Paris where the scandal, as you mentioned, exploded, or you choose
00:02:49.500 to dismiss what International Boxing Association is saying. And you go instead with what the IOC are
00:02:55.680 saying and refusing to say and what the boxers themselves are refusing to disclose. And then you
00:03:00.400 can decide. So in some senses, it's probably a little bit of a, one of those inkblot tests that
00:03:05.260 reveals to you what you felt before the time. But from my perspective, the sequence of events and
00:03:10.980 what we know seems to indicate that these boxes were tested. They had XY chromosomes, and perhaps
00:03:17.900 we'll get into exactly what that means. They were deemed ineligible by the International Boxing
00:03:23.360 Association because the chromosomes they were fined with are typical of males, and therefore they were
00:03:29.120 disqualified from competition. We then know that neither of the boxes appealed that decision,
00:03:33.840 which I think is quite telling because it would be quite an easy case to win if you were actually
00:03:39.160 telling the truth with regards to not being male. And then we also know that people who are close to
00:03:45.780 those boxers, one of the sports scientists who was involved in conditioning the Algerian boxer,
00:03:51.140 has revealed that they did tests and confirmed once again the chromosomal and the testosterone levels
00:03:56.680 were those of males. So I think collectively, there's enough there to say with a very high degree of
00:04:01.740 confidence that they are in fact male biologically, but they've been cleared to compete as women
00:04:08.220 because of what basically is a governance dispute around the sport of boxing and the Olympic Games.
00:04:14.120 Right, because other sports that competed at the Olympics did not allow biological males
00:04:20.860 to compete against women because the Olympics said it would be up to the individual sports.
00:04:25.900 But through this weird series of events, the IOC took over women's boxing directly and eliminated
00:04:33.160 the head governing body. And they say it's because they are corrupt and some connection to Russia.
00:04:40.020 Yeah, so this is where the misinformation accelerates, right? So to understand this,
00:04:45.740 you have to go back a few years. The sporting landscape at the moment is more fragmented with regards
00:04:50.780 to eligibility than it ever has been. Because up until about 2019, all sports were compliant with
00:04:57.060 what was the IOC policy at that time. And what that policy said is that provided you lowered your
00:05:02.480 testosterone levels and you declared your gender identity to be that of a woman, you were allowed
00:05:07.940 to participate in women's sport. And I think starting in about 2019-20, rugby was one of the sports,
00:05:14.260 athletics, cycling, swimming, there's this realization that that policy didn't work.
00:05:18.780 It simply does not achieve fairness and safety for females by allowing biological males into women's
00:05:27.380 sporting spaces. And so one by one, different sports have changed their policy. But the IOC hasn't
00:05:33.800 fulfilled its role as a leadership organization and given the world clear direction. And so instead,
00:05:40.100 it's almost told the member unions, the sports, that you're on your own now, you need to go and figure
00:05:45.340 out how you're going to deal with this problem, which the International Boxing Association duly did.
00:05:51.220 But now we get to the Olympic Games, and it's not unique to Paris, because the same thing happened
00:05:55.820 in Tokyo. There have been so many scandals over the years in Olympic boxing with respects to judging
00:06:01.440 of fights and corruption and judges taking payments and bribes and so forth, that the International
00:06:08.200 Olympic Committee had stepped in and said, we're going to take over boxing because of the judging issue.
00:06:13.200 But it's now spilled over. And the implication of that is that the IOC also run eligibility. So the IBA,
00:06:21.140 which runs the World Championships, had one policy and disqualified these two fighters. And the IOC has a
00:06:27.240 different policy, and therefore they're allowed to fight. And that's why it's a mess, because you
00:06:31.660 effectively have a fragmented, confusing landscape in which different bodies assess eligibility in
00:06:38.220 different ways.
00:06:38.900 Yeah, right. Exactly. And that's why you have male bodies fighting in the boxing, but not barred in
00:06:45.180 the swimming and other sports, because the IOC is directly overseeing boxing and refused to acknowledge
00:06:51.220 these tests that were done at the World's Competition in Boxing the year before. And a word on those tests.
00:06:58.400 So some are suggesting you can't trust those tests, again, because there's something having to do with
00:07:04.720 that maybe a Russian is associated with IBA and there was a Russian boxer. I don't, and we've heard
00:07:10.740 all sorts of rumors, but I will tell you, I have no doubt in my mind that they did text test XY when
00:07:18.460 they were tested, both of these boxers at the World's. And one of the things that led me to reach
00:07:23.240 that conclusion was not only that doctor who was on the board of the IBA saying it on camera this past
00:07:28.860 weekend, but there's a sports journalist who you may know, Alan Abramson, who did 17 years with the LA Times,
00:07:36.800 who was with NBC Sports, respected journalist. He's now got his own independent media company, and I'll make
00:07:43.520 sure that I mention what it is so that people know. Let's see. Hold on. He's actually a professor at USC, and
00:07:49.560 he's the founder of Three Wire Sports, which he's run since 2010. He's the premier Olympics focused media
00:07:55.400 outlet. And this guy was the only journalist to lay eyes on the tests that the boxers took. We
00:08:06.300 interviewed him. This is brand new. The first time we're airing it. And here is what he said.
00:08:11.100 The New Delhi test is three pages long. And the first part of it, like any test you would have
00:08:18.260 if you went to the doctor, says who you are, what time the blood sample was collected, so on and so
00:08:25.880 forth. I believe if memory serves, the blood samples were collected literally within a minute of each
00:08:31.280 other. And then it says result. It says abnormal. And then it says evidence of male karyotype.
00:08:44.520 So a karyotype refers to your chromosomal evidence. And here it says male, with a capital M, male.
00:08:54.540 So he saw it with his own eyes, Ross. He has absolutely no reason to lie. He's a respected
00:09:00.620 journalist. And in my mind, there's absolutely no question that they did take this test, which
00:09:05.320 the two boxers were later forced to sign, not forced, but asked to sign acknowledgement of.
00:09:12.280 And he saw it too. If they're X, Y.
00:09:16.860 Yeah. And that's one of the telling points. If the only thing we had to base all our conversation
00:09:22.220 on was the word of one person at the IBA saying something, and then it becomes an argument of he
00:09:27.680 said versus she said, or he said, then it's a different matter. But I think that's a telling
00:09:32.780 statement from Abramson. I read the articles that he wrote from Paris. There was a little bit more
00:09:38.060 to it. You could track back the correspondence between the IBA and the IOC that dates back to
00:09:43.300 the first time these boxes were tested in 2022. There was a letter that was sent before the IBA was
00:09:49.560 moved aside for Paris in early June. And you could see that they were trying to communicate this to
00:09:55.040 the IOC. So you would have to go to some pretty great lengths to argue that they were creating
00:10:03.480 this all as a ruse or some sort of fallacy around these boxes as part of some Russian plot. When in
00:10:09.520 fact, the more simple conclusion, I think, is that they did in fact test. And we could discuss and
00:10:15.700 critique the way the IBA go about doing that test. How did they identify the boxes? Did they target
00:10:21.040 test on the basis of allegation? I think there are sports governance matters that need to be
00:10:26.020 addressed. But I would see that almost as a parallel discussion. I think that the point that matters
00:10:31.760 really for the sake of women's sport is, was the test result legitimate? Yes or no? And then what is
00:10:37.580 the sport going to do about that? Because once you've identified male competitors in a sport,
00:10:43.960 then the sport has to say, well, what do we do with that? Boxing chose one way,
00:10:47.180 the IOC has chosen another. The response by some has been, this is, this is somehow bigoted because
00:10:55.760 if these two boxers have DSDs, differences in sexual developments, we used to call it intersex.
00:11:03.380 One point we use the word hermaphrodite. It's different from trans where you're just a biological
00:11:08.140 man who thinks he's a woman and starts acting like a woman and starts having surgeries to try to make
00:11:13.260 himself resembles a woman more. This is different. But they say if they have these DSDs and they're
00:11:20.400 born with female genitalia, but inside they're male, inside they have testes. And you can explain
00:11:26.620 some of this because I've heard you explain it very well. Then they're women. Then there's,
00:11:30.980 what's the problem? Like if they're not faking, you know, thinking that they're women or having
00:11:36.820 been raised as girls, what's the problem? Well, the problem is that from the perspective of sport
00:11:45.500 is that during puberty, they are going to undergo all the same development that males do as a
00:11:51.760 consequence of having testes that produce testosterone that can be used by the body.
00:11:57.480 And it's, it's one of those things where sports doesn't ever really need to take on this issue of
00:12:02.880 defined sex and is sex binary. I think it can, and it should, it shouldn't shy away from that,
00:12:07.860 but it actually doesn't need to because for the purposes of a sports conversation, really,
00:12:12.420 all you have to understand is that we have men's sports and we have women's sports.
00:12:16.680 And the dividing line between them is that on the women's sports side, you want those humans who do not
00:12:23.680 benefit from testosterone role in the body to be able to compete against one another. And in order for
00:12:31.080 that to happen, the boundary between them has to be closed and it has to be defended. So that boundary
00:12:37.220 is basically has this individual gone through life with the ability to use and benefit in the context
00:12:44.860 of sport from testosterone's job. Now, everyone watching this will have heard of testosterone. It
00:12:50.360 is the male hormone. It's not the only one, but it's the main one. And at puberty, not uniquely,
00:12:56.340 but particularly at puberty, males are suddenly flooded with this male making hormone. It's called
00:13:02.480 an androgen. The word literally means andro male gen making, and we are flooded with it. And all the
00:13:08.940 changes you see in boys at puberty, the increased muscle mass, the growth in height, the change in
00:13:15.240 the shape of the skeleton, the strength, the power output that they can generate, those are all
00:13:19.880 attributable to the role of testosterone. And that's what female sport has to keep out. So in the case
00:13:26.660 of DSDs, absolutely, you can trace back where the difference happened and how the external genitalia
00:13:33.560 didn't develop in the typical male way. And as a consequence, that baby is born and the midwife or
00:13:39.960 whoever it is says, well, this is a girl. That's not a biologically accurate identification, because
00:13:45.740 later in life, that person will go through male puberty, because they are XY with testes and
00:13:52.500 testosterone. So biologically, they are the same. It's they're male, and they experience all the same
00:13:58.060 benefits from the perspective of sport that males do. So if you have XY, do you develop any female
00:14:06.180 internal organs? Do you develop breasts in puberty? Female internal organs? No, in most cases. Now,
00:14:14.380 there are some conditions where you can be XY, but then you don't have the gene that normally is found
00:14:21.800 on the Y chromosome and is, think of it almost as the master switch that drives male development.
00:14:27.280 If that gene is absent or malfunctioning, there's a condition called Swire syndrome, for instance,
00:14:32.880 where you then don't produce testes. And as a consequence, you don't have testosterone or another
00:14:37.940 hormone, which is called anti-malarian hormone. This is getting into the biological weeds in a way.
00:14:43.060 But I think from the perspective of this conversation, if you are XY, and you have the
00:14:49.640 signal that creates testes as opposed to ovaries, and therefore testosterone, then you also shut down
00:14:56.440 the development of the female reproductive system. And that includes internal and external. In the case
00:15:03.160 of DSDs, depending on which one it is, you don't develop the external genitalia. And it's interesting,
00:15:09.900 if you go back to the Castus Semenya case, world athletics argued that at the court of arbitration
00:15:15.300 for sport. And one of the sticking points was, by all means, you can have this argument that they've
00:15:20.680 got external female genitalia, but it's absolutely irrelevant to sport. What matters for the purposes of
00:15:26.460 sport is whether you can use testosterone for the performance advantages it gives you later in life.
00:15:31.620 Well, how do we know which one these two boxers have?
00:15:38.960 We don't. And that's because it's their right as it's their medical information. So they can choose
00:15:44.680 to disclose it or not. If you go back to even with Castus Semenya, and all the DSDs that track and field
00:15:51.060 have dealt with, they very rarely do. So I don't expect that we ever will. And that's one of the
00:15:55.460 realities of the situation. And it's why I think one needs to be a little bit cautious, because
00:15:59.540 there are some DSDs where you don't get full male development. And in some cases, you don't get
00:16:06.160 any, because you can have one of the conditions is called complete androgen insensitivity syndrome.
00:16:13.000 So you are completely insensitive to androgens like testosterone. So you can have male testes
00:16:19.800 with testosterone levels of a typical male, but you can't use it at all. And in the world athletics
00:16:26.120 case, for instance, they made a specific allowance that that condition is not part of what they
00:16:31.800 regulate. So they would allow someone with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome to participate
00:16:38.040 because there is no advantage, even though they are biologically male. And I think, as a broader
00:16:43.940 point, this is one of the reasons why a conversation and a focus on a specific individual or case makes
00:16:51.960 it more difficult, I think, to argue the principle around women's sports and how it should remain
00:16:57.160 closed to male advantage, because you can very quickly spiral into these very nuanced details and
00:17:03.360 find exceptions. And you start talking about edge cases and rare conditions that actually obscure the
00:17:09.980 reality, which is that the IOC, as it stands, believe that female is what's written in your passport.
00:17:16.360 And so the president of the IOC, Thomas Bach, can tell the world's media that he has no way of
00:17:21.980 identifying who's a man and who's a woman. And it's an unsolvable problem for them because they've
00:17:27.340 chosen to value identity above biology. And all the preoccupation with one individual here and
00:17:33.640 there probably allows them to do that. Yeah, that's literally what he said. I mean,
00:17:38.820 we've played the soundbites, but he said chromosomes don't determine sex. That's just not true anymore
00:17:43.640 that, you know, you can have X, Y and be female. You can have, I guess, XX and be male. And that
00:17:49.400 what's important here is that they listed themselves as female in their passports.
00:17:56.060 Exactly. And he knows that trans women can also be listed as female in their passport. He knows that
00:18:04.300 the condition that was documented to have occurred in the athletes in track and field is 5ARD,
00:18:11.760 where you can use testosterone in the completely normal, typical way. And so there's in full male
00:18:18.440 advantage. That was the conclusion from the court case around Castus Semenya. And he knows that,
00:18:24.240 but they've, and it comes back to the, what I mentioned to you earlier there, that in about 2020,
00:18:29.460 21, the sports landscape fragmented and the IOC went in a direction where it chose inclusion of
00:18:36.340 trans women and DSD athletes over fairness and safety for female athletes. And it was a,
00:18:42.020 it was a conscious choice. I mean, you could go back to the conversations that world rugby had.
00:18:47.500 You can talk about how athletics and swimming and cycling framed it. They all realized that you cannot
00:18:53.300 have all three. So if you think from the perspective of sport is inclusion into the category of your
00:18:59.960 choice. So in other words, I'm male, but I identify as a woman and I want to play women's football or
00:19:06.280 women's soccer for the American audience, uh, women's basketball safety for the participants and
00:19:13.160 fairness. And what world rugby recognized for instance, is that you couldn't balance those.
00:19:17.900 And so you had to instead prioritize them. And the priority was safety first, fairness, second,
00:19:24.180 and inclusion cannot be achieved. And so therefore trans women cannot play women's rugby.
00:19:29.740 And I think the same decision was reached by swimming was reached by athletics and it was
00:19:34.320 reached by cycling. So the president of the IOC knows that those are three of the big sports at
00:19:41.240 the Olympic games. And so they've, they've had this conversation. And when he sat and told everyone
00:19:46.700 that no one has offered a solution and that they are unable to do it, that's, it's simply dishonest.
00:19:52.520 Is it a blood test that they have the players take to figure out what the chromosomes are?
00:19:56.660 Yeah. You don't even necessarily need blood because you can just take a scraping from the
00:20:02.300 inside of the cheek and you can examine those cells because there's a specific structure called
00:20:08.060 the bar body, which only exists if you have two X chromosomes. So if you took a scrape from the inside
00:20:14.220 of my cheek, you wouldn't see it. Whereas the inside of yours, you would. And so if mine was absent,
00:20:19.380 I would call it test negative, whereas you'd test positive. And so that, that could be used as a
00:20:25.020 first screen, for instance, if they wish to go in that direction, that's what used to happen. Uh,
00:20:30.440 in the 1968 Olympics, I believe it was, was the first time that they used that test prior to that
00:20:36.480 sex verification or, or gender testing, if you wish used to involve having all the female participants
00:20:42.880 parade in front of a panel of judges nude. And you can imagine how that was perceived, right?
00:20:49.380 Exactly. So how do you factor in on the subject of whether the testosterone is getting used by the
00:20:56.340 person with DSD or it's not getting used because there's a blocker? Um, there's the old fashioned
00:21:02.820 process of eyes. And I, I mean, you look at these boxers in particular, the one from Algeria,
00:21:09.840 and this person looks like a man that they have the height advantage. They have the physicality of it.
00:21:14.860 There are no breasts. And then we have the testimonial of several women who have boxed
00:21:20.580 against Khalif saying it was unsafe. I did not want to box against him further. And I'm,
00:21:28.040 I feel lucky to be alive, said one, another one came out, the one who the Italian who said it was
00:21:33.140 just too strong. This is not nothing I was used to. Um, we've seen repeatedly women say there was
00:21:39.720 something different about him and our own eyes suggest there was something different about
00:21:44.340 Khalif. How does that factor in? Yeah, I would, I think from a policy governance perspective,
00:21:52.060 you would want to be careful to make that the basis for a decision, obviously, because
00:21:57.060 even though it's probably very accurate, it may be 90%, in which case 10% of the time it's not.
00:22:04.500 Right. And then you run the risk of accusing someone when they are actually not male. And so
00:22:10.120 that becomes a problem for the sport. And one of the, one of the issues I think that track and field
00:22:15.120 faced was the implementation of the policy around DSD athletes did over rely on the subject of
00:22:21.480 assessment. And I, I, by no means want to diminish that because I think in particular, and I've, I've
00:22:26.380 learned this in the last five or six years in this discussion is that women are quite good at making
00:22:30.840 that assessment because they almost have to a lot of the time and you have to respect that.
00:22:35.660 But I think there's a better way to do it where you, you don't ever need to even rely on subjectivity
00:22:40.720 because if you can do an initial screen that identifies an X, Y, or as I was saying, the, the,
00:22:47.020 there's now more, even, even more sophisticated genetic tests that can identify the specific gene,
00:22:53.960 that SRY, that sex determining region gene. And if you find that, then the person is male.
00:22:59.560 And then you can follow that screen up with a series of diagnostic tests that are completely
00:23:04.880 non-invasive and will give you an understanding of the diagnosis without ever needing to pass
00:23:10.640 judgment. Because you've probably seen the moment there's a subjective assessment, it opens up all
00:23:16.460 kinds of doors for a, you're going to do the nude parade and you're going to judge women based on
00:23:21.280 their genitalia, which no one is proposing. Or it opens up allegations that women who don't conform to
00:23:28.020 some Western gender stereotype are going to be judged and targeted.
00:23:31.680 Well, that's what the papers, that's what the papers are arguing right now, that that's what's
00:23:35.580 happening to these two boxers, that because they don't conform to a, you know, I don't know, 1950s
00:23:42.040 stereotype of appearance on women. That's why we're saying that they're male. And it's been very
00:23:50.300 frustrating for me because that's not it at all. We're saying they're male because they tested X,
00:23:55.280 why? And there are credible, many people who say they've seen the tests. And to your point,
00:24:00.940 they didn't appeal them. If I, if I were set, if I were told I can't compete in the gold medal round,
00:24:07.380 like happened to Khalif at the world, because I tested X, Y, I would have 10 different testing
00:24:15.280 companies test me again and say, please promise me you'll make the tests public because I know I'm
00:24:21.020 female. I know I'm XX and I certainly would see the appeal through. And if I happen to have a DSD
00:24:26.860 that prohibited me from getting the male advantage, like all that testosterone was blocked in me,
00:24:32.940 same, I'd say, let's do the tests. I'm telling you, I'm, I don't have any of those advantages
00:24:39.080 because I know what my puberty was like. I know what my development was like. The fact that these two
00:24:43.780 just gave it up as soon as the test came up, came up, says a lot.
00:24:49.740 I think so. And that first screen you mentioned that's, that's within hours. So this is not let's
00:24:56.480 test and wait a week or two. You'd know within hours, if not less that you were XX or XY. So if
00:25:01.860 that's the claim, then it's so easily provable. And so I think the absence of that proof and the
00:25:06.720 absence of those appeals is probably quite telling. I agree with you on that.
00:25:09.960 What's going to happen next? Because the, now the Olympics are coming to LA, uh, in 2028. Now we're
00:25:16.680 back on American territory. We are, uh, there are certainly California, but I know they don't
00:25:21.960 oversee it, uh, all of this, but what's going to happen with the IOC in this issue now that it's
00:25:25.880 become so prominent. And frankly, they're the ones who put these two boxers in this terrible
00:25:30.880 position. I've heard you say this too, but it's really the IOC's fault for putting these two boxers
00:25:35.960 in the ring. So are we going to expect much more of this in four years?
00:25:41.600 I'm afraid so. I wish I could say that this was a turning point. I think it's a low point
00:25:46.300 and I'd hope that it would also be a turning point, but when it happened in Paris, I remember
00:25:50.560 thinking, will they now at some point start to retreat from their, this is they being the IOC
00:25:56.080 from the framework that they'd created, which prioritized inclusion and held that there should
00:26:00.680 never be a presumption of advantage unless it was a non-science and nonsense document that they
00:26:06.540 produced. But what happened instead is that they seem to dig their heels in and double down on it.
00:26:11.640 So I've, I've very much lost confidence that the IOC are going to back down from the position that
00:26:16.440 they've created for themselves. So I could see one of two things happening. One is that the sports
00:26:23.140 themselves, because remember they've been given the mandate by the IOC to look after their own house.
00:26:28.480 And so they may look at this and say, we don't want this controversy and we're going to actually
00:26:33.620 put in place some kind of robust policies. And we're going to imitate, for instance, athletics
00:26:38.140 and cycling and swimming, which again, are the three biggest sports at the Olympic game. So there's a
00:26:43.100 fair degree of safety in numbers. They can almost hide behind the three of the four, maybe big Olympic
00:26:49.120 sports. So that's one option. The second one that may happen is that women boxers may consider legal
00:26:55.720 action because this situation that developed in Paris, whether it was in Paris or in the future
00:27:01.760 was reasonably foreseeable. There's no doubt in my mind about that, because when the sports bodies
00:27:07.880 were assessing this years ago, it was quite clear that there was a fairness issue, even if you lower
00:27:13.020 the testosterone, which is what the policy used to say. And so if you have a fairness issue in sports
00:27:18.340 like swimming and cycling, then the moment it's applied in a sport where there's combat and physical
00:27:23.640 contact like rugby, this is the calculus we made or boxing. Now you've got a safety issue.
00:27:29.940 And I think there's a case that could be made to say that we have now been exposed. We, the female
00:27:35.060 boxers have been exposed to a risk that we didn't consent to and which could have reasonably been
00:27:40.140 foreseen. And that's the kind of thing that may now happen. I don't know whether anyone will have
00:27:45.080 the appetite. I know how difficult it is for women to take those cases forward, but that's the sort of
00:27:50.820 thing that may, that may be necessary if this situation is going to turn.
00:27:56.000 Yeah, they need to. I mean, you've been talking about how this is not about testosterone. Even
00:28:00.280 lowering your testosterone is not going to eliminate your male advantage. If you are XY, if you're, if
00:28:06.640 you're male, it's just not going to, you've gone through male puberty and you'll have all those
00:28:10.500 advantages no matter what happens to your testosterone. I will say now, um, Khalif has filed a
00:28:15.680 lawsuit, not a lawsuit. He's got, they've gotten the French authorities to look into whether Elon Musk
00:28:22.000 and JK Rowling committed some anti bullying or harassment, like criminal offense by objecting
00:28:29.680 to their presence in the boxing, uh, the women's boxing. That's not going to go well for Khalif.
00:28:35.080 I realize this is like the French and their laws are different, but if their laws look anything like
00:28:39.340 ours, they're going to be allowed to actually demand the testing. They're going to be allowed to demand
00:28:44.700 to know what the truth is. And my prediction is as soon as they get that, the case will go away
00:28:49.740 because these two obviously don't want that testing to take place. And there's a reason for that.
00:28:53.780 Ross, thank you for being honest on this and being a voice of reason in the wilderness.
00:28:57.760 It's great to talk to you. Thanks, Megan. I appreciate the chance to talk to you. Thanks so much.
00:29:02.340 All the best. Again, that's Ross Tucker. He's co-host of the podcast,
00:29:05.440 the science of sport. And they had a lot of great shows during the Olympics, uh, analyzing all the sports.
00:29:10.900 So this was just one of the many, but it was someplace where I learned a ton and sent me down
00:29:16.020 a whole lane of learning on the internet, which is just fascinating. This is deeply unfair. That's
00:29:22.560 my takeaway on this deeply unfair. And this needs to be stopped before more women get hurt. Thanks
00:29:28.960 for listening. See you next time. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS,
00:29:35.980 no agenda and no fear.