For the first time EVER, next month’s Olympics in Rio will be more inclusive to transgender athletes - as trans men and women won’t be required to undergo gender reassignment surgery to compete.

But could this give some athletes a competitive advantage?

Meet Chris Mosier

Chris Mosier is an American duathlete and triathlete who has been competing in male events for six years. He was already competing at an elite level - in the women’s category - when he realised in his twenties that he was transgender.

“I think it wasn’t until I started to question my gender identity that I started to become more aware that in the sports context of lining up for races with other women and feeling like I didn’t belong. For me, that was where sports and gender intersected,” Chris told Hack.

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“There were a lot of factors, obviously, that went into considering about transition, but sports was definitely one of them - so, how I would be able to transition categories and continue to compete at a high level, when I wasn’t really sure what the policies would be.”

Chris started his transition using hormone replacement therapy and soon after qualified for the US national men’s duathlon and triathlon team - but was still unsure whether, as a transgender man who hadn’t undergone full reassignment surgery, he would be allowed to compete.

To Chris’s surprise, the USA Triathlon, his fellow competitors and - once his story got out - even the media were supportive of his transition and ambition to compete alongside cisgender men (men who were assigned male at birth).

“They were like, ‘Well, we don’t really expect him to do well, he’s just an age group athlete out there to have fun, so let him compete.’ In many ways, that was just kind of my new male privilege presenting itself, that people didn’t give me a hard time about it!” Chris laughs.

Skip Twitter Tweet FireFox NVDA users - To access the following content, press 'M' to enter the iFrame. Bodies comes in all shapes and sizes - an obvious fact that we forget when speaking about trans bodies. — The Chris Mosier (@TheChrisMosier) July 14, 2016

The International Olympic Committee - together with a board of medical experts, lawyers and athletes themselves - recently released a new set of guidelines to ensure gender diverse competitors would not be discriminated against at the top level of sport.

Previously, transgender male and female athletes were required to have full gender reassignment surgery in order to compete in their preferred gender category at the Games.

Rio will be the first Olympics where that’s no longer the case. For trans men, there are no rules on competing in male events other than identifying as a man - but to ensure competition remains fair, the restrictions are stricter on trans women.

In order to compete, a transgender woman must be on cross hormone therapy for at least one year prior to qualifying for their sport, and their levels of testosterone - the male hormone that diminishes when transitioning to a woman - must be below a reading of 10 nanomols per litre in their bodies to give them similar hormonal levels as cisgender women.

For transgender men, declaring their gender is sufficient.

“When my story comes out as a trans man competing against men,” Chris says, “people are like, ‘oh, great!’ but when it comes down to the other way around, if it’s a trans woman competing against women, that become a much bigger story; a much bigger media event.”

The other way round: meet Joanna Harper

Unlike Chris, elite athlete, scientist and transgender woman Joanna Harper saw her transition in 2004 as career-suicide.

“I had come to the conclusion that I would never compete again once I transitioned. At least legally.

“I thought I would never really run in the female category,” Joanna told Hack.

More than a decade later, Joanna has competed in the female category; she’s published the world’s first and only study into transgender athletes and has become the first transgender person in history to consult the IOC on gender-based issues.

But it’s been a long road to get there.

“I have faced a lot of hatred, that would not be too excessive to say. Many of my rivals are not happy at all that I’m racing.

“I’ve learned to grow a thick skin. There are plenty of my rivals who have seen me have good races and bad races good years and bad years.

“The ones who can’t see past the fact that I was assigned male at birth? The heck with them.”

Defining competitive advantage

Figuring out the advantage - or disadvantage - a transgender athlete has over a cisgendered athlete isn’t simple; it varies from sport to sport.

Distance running, the sport Joanna competes in and which she published her study exclusively on, is one of the simpler sports to measure advantage.

For female runners, height isn’t really a competitive advantage or disadvantage. But testosterone levels definitely are.

Joanna Harper started hormone therapy to suppress her testosterone levels in August 2004.

“Within weeks I was running markedly slower.

“In three months, I lost 90 per cent of the speed that I would lose.

“And by nine months I ran my first race as Joanna, my first official race. I was over 30 seconds per kilometre slower. As a percentage I was running 12 per cent slower. And men are approximately 10 - 12 percent faster than women.

“I had lost my full male advantage in nine months of hormones.”

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Joanna Harper’s study, which surveyed eight transgender women runners, found the same thing across the board.

Each of the runners were competing at the same “age grade” level - a relative grading measurement for runners - before and after their transition.

In other words, hormone therapy had fairly levelled their performance to their new gender. Having a different birth gender to the category they were competing in gave them no clear advantage.

Other athletes aren’t always convinced.

“No athlete likes to get less athletic, but I thought people will see that I’ve gotten slower.

It didn’t of course work out that way. Most women don’t necessarily know exactly how fast I was before. But if I finish one place in front of them in a race, they’re going to figure that it’s unfair.”

Distance running is one thing. For other sports, Joanna says, the delineation isn’t quite as clear.

Like basketball - where height is definitely an advantage for athletes. Hormone therapy won’t make a transgender woman shorter.

“There are definitely sports in which transgender women have somewhat of an advantage. But there are also sports like gymnastics where transgender women are never going to be successful. There will never be an elite trans woman gymnast.”

Joanna says there is no “perfect solution” for this problem. But she points out that there’s always a level of advantage or disadvantage among every athlete.

“We accept that a certain level of advantage is alright.

“One third of elite fencers are left handed. One tenth of the population is left handed. So left handed fencers definitely have an advantage over right handed fencers. We allow that.

“And right now trans women are drastically underrepresented.

Any advantage that a trans woman may have physically, [that is] vastly overwhelmed by the social disadvantages that trans women currently have.”

Transgender athletes at Rio

We’re a week out of the 2016 Olympics, and there’s last-minute calls happening to bench warmers all over the place (like the Australian Women’s Eight, ICYMI).

So will there be any transgender athletes competing under the IOC’s new guidelines at Rio?

Joanna Harper says there’s likely to be two transgender athletes competing in their preferred gender at Rio. She doesn’t know who they are or if they’re open.

But there will certainly be more transgender athletes competing at Rio, Joanna says.

“There’s 10,000 athletes. There will be at least 50 trans people competing.

“But most of them will be competing in their birth gender and will not have transitioned yet.

But will there be open transgender athletes competing in his or her preferred gender? That remains to be seen.”