There’s something quietly absurd about asking an Olympic medalist to write a check proving she’s a woman. But that’s effectively what’s happening to British female athletes right now.
Reporting by The Times revealed this week that UK Athletics has been advising its female competitors to personally cover the cost of mandatory sex verification tests — £185 each — if they want to be eligible to race internationally.
The bill lands exclusively on women. Men aren’t tested at all.
The Test Itself
World Athletics introduced the requirement as part of a broader effort to define eligibility for the female category at Diamond League events and major championships, including the World Championships. The target is straightforward: exclude athletes with Y-chromosome biology — whether transgender or those with differences of sex development (DSD) — from women’s competition.
The test itself is simple enough. It’s a cheek swab, not a blood draw, and it only needs to be done once in an athlete’s career. It checks for the SRY gene, a marker carried on the Y chromosome. A positive result means an athlete doesn’t qualify for the female category.
When World Athletics first rolled out the policy ahead of last September’s World Championships in Tokyo, the federation helped shoulder costs — contributing $100 per test for roughly 1,000 female athletes going through the process for the first time, as The Times reported. Funding is also being made available for this year’s World Junior Championships.
What’s not being funded, at least not automatically, is the cost for British athletes. UK Athletics has told its women to handle this themselves, and to do it promptly to avoid any last-minute selection headaches. For athletes already navigating the financial squeeze of elite sport, that’s a frustrating thing to hear.
“Stunned” Is the Word Being Used
The Times spoke with sources close to British athletes who described the reaction as genuine shock. Part of what stings, beyond the £185 itself, is the principle: women are being asked to verify their sex to gain access to a competition that men enter without question. That asymmetry isn’t lost on anyone.
UK Athletics does maintain a hardship fund for athletes who genuinely can’t afford the fee, assessing those requests individually. But the existence of a hardship fund doesn’t really address why the cost isn’t being covered as standard — especially given what British athletics has delivered on the world stage.
It’s worth noting that scientists have raised serious concerns about the policy itself — questioning both the science behind SRY testing and its implications for athletes with naturally occurring genetic variations. The debate around the test’s validity hasn’t stopped World Athletics from pushing ahead.
The SRY testing policy sits within a rapidly shifting global landscape around athlete eligibility. The IOC has been expected to impose its own blanket ban on transgender women from female Olympic categories, while World Athletics was among the first major governing bodies to prohibit transgender women from competing in the female category back in 2023.
The direction of travel in elite sport is clear. But the mechanics of how these policies are enforced — and crucially, who bears the cost — is a conversation that’s only just beginning.
What It Means for Athletes
For the running and athletics community, this story sits at the uncomfortable intersection of policy, fairness, and money. Women competing at the elite level already face enough structural disadvantages — lower prize money in many events, shorter careers, greater injury risk — without being handed an unexpected bill just to show up at the start line.
These athletes train full-time, often on tight budgets, to represent their country. Being handed a £185 bill as a condition of doing that isn’t partnership. It’s an afterthought.
Whether pressure from athletes, coaches, or the wider public changes UKA’s approach remains to be seen. For now, the test is mandatory, the money is due, and British women are being asked to sort it out themselves.
