American sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson had qualified for the Tokyo Olympics, having run the 100 meters in 10.86 seconds during the Olympic trials. However, it was then announced that Richardson’s trial results had been erased, and that she was now ineligible for the 100-meter race in Tokyo.
Why? As The Daily Wire’s Joe Morgan explained, “the United States Anti-Doping Agency announced that Richardson tested positive” for THC “in a sample collected at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials on June 19, 2021.”
Richardson admitted that she had used marijuana to cope with the loss of her biological mother the week before the trials, but that she knew it was the wrong thing to do.
“Honestly, I just want to apologize for my actions,” Richardson said. “I know what I did. I know what I’m supposed to do, I’m allowed not to do, and I still made that decision. Not making any excuse, or looking for any empathy in my case.”
While Richardson was undoubtedly foolish to risk her immediate sporting future, this instance does highlight a slightly bizarre inconsistency when it comes to the nature of “performance enhancement” in the Olympic Games.
Marijuana — for even those of us who are novices in the drug “world” — is hardly known as a performance enhancing drug. Not only that, Richardson reportedly consumed the substance in Oregon — where marijuana is legal.
Yes, of course, the laws of Oregon aren’t necessarily the laws of the Olympic committee, or vice versa. But why doesn’t this logic apply to another controversial chemical object: testosterone?
While Richardson’s chances of Olympic glory have been scuppered by a common and widely permitted substance, a man from New Zealand is set to dominate the women’s Olympic weightlifting competition, with barely an eyelid raised in outrage.
Laurel Hubbard, a male-to-female transgender weightlifter, is now set to make “history” as the first openly transgender person to compete in the Olympic Games. Hubbard, who is 43-years-old, will participate as a member of New Zealand’s weightlifting team, and is the oldest weightlifter in the competition.
Hubbard transitioned in 2013, and only became eligible to compete in the Olympics after the International Olympic Committee changed its rules in 2015, allowing transgender athletes to compete with athletes of the gender of which they identify “as long as the athlete’s testosterone measured below 10 nanomoles per liter for at least a year prior to competing.”
For a biological man to compete against women in the Olympic Games, they must have a testosterone level just below the normal measurement of 10 to 35 nanomoles per liter.
The normal testosterone level for women? 0.5 to 2.4 nanomoles per liter.
According to the Olympic Games, therefore, a biological man with testosterone levels four times higher than the average woman is able to compete as a woman just by identifying as one. Meanwhile, an athlete who smoked a joint cannot, under any circumstances, compete.
Marijuana is not a performance enhancing drug.
Testosterone, however, is quite the opposite.
Ian Haworth is an Editor and Writer for The Daily Wire. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.