The Trans Athletes Who Changed the Olympics—in 1936
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This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. In 1934, Zdeněk Kóbek, a track star from Czechoslovakia, set the women's world record for the 800-meter dash. A year later, Kóbek shocked the world by declaring that he was now living as a man, an announcement that gained him international celebrity.

He eventually gave back the medals that he'd won in women's competitions. Well, he is going to work now in the French casino, you see. And then he'll start again, maybe, like an athlete, you see. He's going to train and compete against men. Yes, that's it.

Around the same time, a popular British track star who held titles in women's competitions also transitioned. Both these stories contributed to panic over trans athletes. And remember, this was all the way back in the 1930s. And these stories also led to sex testing policies that still define sports today. That's the subject of a new book by Michael Waters called "The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports."

Michael Waters has written for The New Yorker and other magazines. He talked about the other Olympians with our sports columnist, Louisa Thomas. Can you tell us a little bit about Sedeq Kovac? Yeah. So Kovac is born in 1913 in what would eventually become Czechoslovakia. He's born before World War I, before it becomes independent. And kind of the capstone of his career is in 1934, right?

when he participates in something called the Women's World Games, which, for just a slight bit of context, like basically the early Olympics had incredibly few sports for women, and track and field sports for women in particular was stigmatized. And so the Women's World Games was actually the highest level of competition for someone like Kovac, especially for the women's 800 meters, which was his main sport. And so in 1934, the Women's World Games is in London, and he...

both wins gold and sets a world record. And so that kind of puts him on the map. And then really what catapults him to fame ultimately is, you know, a year later in December 1935 when he does decide to transition. And, you know, we're talking about gender here. It was using that word gender. I mean, in the book,

You used the word sex as opposed to gender. And I was just wondering if you could explain that decision a little bit. Yeah, it's a tricky thing to talk about. And I definitely wrestled with it, still wrestle with it. But essentially, I mean, at the time in the 1930s, there was no concept of gender and sex as distinct things. So like today we think of gender as this psychological socialized identity and sex is this kind of

assigned identity roughly based on physical traits of some kind. You know, it's an imperfect assignment, but that's kind of what it is. And so in the 1930s, when people were talking about transitioning, they were only talking about sex. And what was the media coverage like when he announced this transition? It was pretty sensational. But I really think through all of this reporting, what you see is this, like, genuine sense of curiosity about Kobach and about...

sort of what it means to transition gender. And so pretty quickly after the initial wave of coverage, you have different sexologists and scientists of different kinds, doctors writing into magazines, including some really prominent sports magazines of the era, kind of describing what this means and what it means to move between these categories, which I'm calling gender transition, but they would say something about like sexual metamorphosis, which just doesn't really translate to us today.

And I think through it all, you see, you know, for all of the kind of bold-faced headlines that feel a little ridiculous in retrospect, you see the genuine just interest and intrigue about Kovac and what he meant for what they were calling sex and kind of the possibilities of sex. It really was an era in which there seemed like such...

potential for sex and gender as we would describe it today. So obviously 1935, 1936, especially in the sporting world, but also in the broader world, these are loaded years. I mean, what else was happening? I mean, the newspapers were also full of news of the rise of fascism. So could you talk a little bit about how Kobach fit into that story as well?

Yeah, so in 1935, you know, kind of the biggest sports story is not Quebec, but is rather the Berlin Olympics, which are happening the following year in the summer of 1936. Berlin's great day dawns with the arrival of the Olympic flame at the end of its 2,000-mile journey from Greece. And meanwhile, a packed stadium and flag-draped cheering streets greet Chancellor Hitler on his way to perform the opening ceremony.

And the Berlin Olympics, I think, today are quite famous, but they are especially famous because they were hosted in Nazi Germany. And in 1935, a lot of the coverage in the U.S. around the Olympics was talking about this really intense boycott movement that was happening where a bunch of American athletes and officials and activists were saying, like, we shouldn't

glorify the Nazis in this way. We shouldn't give them this platform through which to sort of showcase their power and ideology in the form of the Olympics. This is an era in which fascism is rising throughout Europe, and you see it really directly trickle down into the sports world. And so while the public, as we're describing, was quite receptive to Quebec, I think

This is an era of fascism in Europe, and you start to see that in how actually policy gets crafted in response to him. So there seems to be a sort of disconnect between the public responses to these transitioning athletes. How did the sporting world respond? Ultimately what happens is that kind of a small group of sporting officials have this backlash to him, and they see the story of Quebec transitioning gender, and they say that...

It is kind of a harbinger of things to come in sports and that there has to be policy instituted. And I should say for context, also, Kobach only wanted to play men's sports. I mean, Kobach was like, I just want to play with other men. So it's kind of like a false conflation in the first place that

Right. It's a bit confusing because Kobe transition, but what he inspired was actually a fear that men were disguising themselves as women and competing in women's sports in order to win. And so this policy that we're going to talk about, it wasn't originally aimed at transathletes.

Yeah, absolutely. And actually, ultimately, like, what happens is that the IAAF, the track and field organizing body, in August 1936 at the Berlin Olympics, passes this kind of early, really rudimentary form of sex testing.

The policy is very vaguely worded, as a lot of reporters actually did note at the time. And so the IAAF couches sex testing in this first form under its protest rule. And basically what it says is that if a competitor wants to lodge a protest against another athlete, and there's like this kind of vague allusion to sex,

like something doubtful about their bodies or something. Like they describe it as like abnormal women athletes, quote unquote. So if a competitor wants to lodge a protest against a fellow athlete, they can and then a doctor would physically inspect that athlete. They didn't define like

what the doctor was looking for. They didn't define who would qualify as sort of being allowed to participate in women's sports. I mean, it really seemed to be a policy of, oh, we'll know it when we see it. But yeah, so this first form of sex testing was basically like an athlete could say, this person who beat me, like, I have questions about. And then that person would be subjected to kind of like a strip search, like a really kind of gross physical examination. And the IAAF at the time didn't even spell out

what they would be looking for and who would qualify. Right. So it's like this person has like what, hairy legs or muscular arms? I mean, that's... No, for sure. I mean, you see in this era, I mean, you see lots of fear mongering and panic around just like women, cis women who looked masculine, who had like big biceps. Or there was this American sprinter named Helen Stevens who had a deep voice because of a childhood accident, who was constantly a subject of...

these sort of rumors and fear-mongering about sex testing. And so, I mean, someone like that could be caught up in this too. There wasn't really a clear policy. It was just anyone who didn't fit this very normative idea of femininity in the first place

And I mean, for further context, I mean, this is an era too when there's so much fear-mongering about just women playing sports and especially playing track and field in the first place. And so masculine women in general were just subject to scrutiny and critique. And then essentially what happens is that sex testing expands and you first start to see letters back and forth from the IAAF in 1939 calling for the sex testing of all women in women's sports. And then after World War II,

essentially all women are required to showcase a medical certificate proving that they had gotten some kind of gynecological exam that sort of quote-unquote proved that they were a woman or that they fit this sort of definition created by the IAAF. And later in the century, you could be

randomly tested by the IOC, but the idea was that this wouldn't be testing just based on a protest from a fellow athlete, but this was kind of the default of anyone who wanted to compete in the women's category had to undergo some form of testing or had sort of the threat of testing. Today, I mean, all women athletes are governed by these rules, but only certain women end up to be tested.

And so as we talk about sex testing today, we often are forgetting where these policies come from in the first place, that they are the result of the Berlin Olympics in 1936, and they are the result of sort of these very specific officials who were certainly swayed by certain fascist ideas. And just that history of where these policies even came from in the first place has largely been forgotten. ♪

Staff writer Louisa Thomas talking to Michael Waters about the other Olympians. We'll continue in a moment. Let me ask you about Kovac. So Kovac transitions. What happens to him?

Yeah, so in 1936, a few months after Kovac first announces that he's living as a man, he becomes kind of a global celebrity and a producer on Broadway in New York reaches out to him and asks him to come to New York to perform in this variety show that he's putting on. And so in August 1936, as this discussion is happening in Berlin around sex testing policy,

And then he has this kind of weird perfunctory role in this Broadway show for a couple of months in New York. And then after that, he goes to Paris to perform in this variety show where he danced alongside Josephine Baker. And so he's this kind of global celebrity for this moment in 1936. But he's also a very, very popular person.

He eventually gets a driver's license that identifies him as a man, and shortly thereafter, he gets married to a woman. And this is an era in which, you know, the far right is rising in Czechoslovakia, the Nazis eventually take over, and Kovac, I think, by nature of having these documents that identify him as a man and by nature of just kind of receding from the spotlight...

He ultimately does survive this sort of fascist era in which many other queer and trans people are being sent to death camps and having these really extreme interventions by the Nazis. And then in 1944, he enrolls in this local team and for the first time gets to play in men's sports. And he seemed to do it for a number of years throughout his life. And it's really this

conclusion to his story that he gets to do what he always wanted and he's doing it above all else for just the love of competition in the first place.

I mean, the discussion around sex in the Olympics and sex segregation in elite sport and, you know, elementary school sports, you know, obviously is a major culture war front today. You know, no longer are athletes, you know, required to do a kind of strip test. But how is that category defined right now?

Yeah, and so, I mean, really what you saw since the 1930s is after all these strip tests got a lot of criticism, you see sports officials and the IOC eventually move into chromosome testing with the idea that we can sort of see who has the right chromosomes. And you see that happen in the 1960s. And then that got a lot of criticism from athletes themselves, from other officials, from doctors who were talking about how...

You know, chromosomes even themselves don't neatly map onto sex. And, you know, you can have a mosaic of chromosomes and sort of not identify as intersex, for instance. And after all of that criticism, eventually the IOC moved to this kind of hormone-based testing, which similarly, I mean, there's not like a cutoff between when a hormone level like switches from like female to male or something like that. You know, there is this spectrum of hormone levels regardless of who you are.

And today, and most recently, what has happened is that now the IOC doesn't set an overarching policy, and so it's up to these individual sports federations like World Athletics to set their own policies. And so it's kind of this haphazard sort of slapdash set of policies that are quite punitive to especially trans feminine and intersex women in sports. And of course, you know, what is lost in all of this discussion is just the human toll and just the lack of respect for women

these really successful trans and intersex athletes themselves who, you know, have just become these political pawns and who just want to play their sport. There's a book that you cite

at the end of yours by Katie Barnes, Fair Play, which I think does a pretty good job of laying out some of these, the evolution of the understanding of some of these debates around trans people in sports. And they basically describe sex as the result of the interplay of chromosomes, sex hormones, internal reproductive structure, gonads, external genitalia, being this very complex thing. And yet it is complicated because sex

You know, certainly among elite athletes, there is a demonstrated effect of going through testosterone-driven puberty. Times in men's events at the elite level tend to be 10 to 12 percent faster in track, let's say, or in swimming than in women's events. So I think that part of what makes it complicated for even people who are sympathetic to the fact that there is this human element, you know, that want to see women

trans people just play their sport. I'm willing to admit that the categories are complex and more complex than our current conversation allows. But yeah, I mean, there is just a demonstrated effect. The times are what they are. And I'm wondering what you think of that. Yeah, I mean, it's a complicated subject that I don't think that I, as a historian, want to be the one ultimately trying to litigate. But I think...

To me, what is striking about reading the contemporary policies is the...

fear-mongering that has been focused on these trans women and intersex women in sports. I mean, if you're a successful trans woman athlete, you can't play in most of these Olympic sports. You can't play in the sport that corresponds with your identity. One of the things that's so striking to me is that a lot of the policies, certainly in the United States, are actually not targeted at

Yeah.

acknowledging that, you know, perhaps some sort of restriction at the elite level is appropriate. But they made it very clear that there should be a path toward inclusion and that not only should trans people be allowed to compete, but they should be allowed to win, which is a lot of, you know, the

A lot of people have had, have no problem with, you know, trans people competing as long as they're finishing last, you know, if the question arises when they start to win. I mean, there are all of these other invisible advantages that we don't talk about in sports, like class, for instance, you know, just having the money to afford sports.

in the first place has such a strong correlation with your level of success in these competitions. And that's something that we're not regulating. Like we've accepted that there's these advantages. There are all kinds of physical advantages around heights, et cetera, et cetera, that we don't try to regulate in this way. And so I hope that even just by seeing kind of where these policies come from in the first place maybe allows us to

add some nuance to this conversation too and see that sex testing itself is a very subjective policy that was created in a very specific moment and maybe doesn't have to be inevitable in sports, at least in the way that it's structured currently. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me.

Michael Waters is the author of The Other Olympians, Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports, which comes out next week. Louisa Thomas writes our column, The Sporting Scene, at newyorker.com. And she'll be joining us soon to talk about the upcoming Olympics. I'm David Remnick. Thanks for listening to the show today. And thanks again, too, to all of you who have been writing in about our election coverage, sharing ideas and observations and questions. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. See you next time.

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