Ewa klobukowska sprinterka

Can you come in next and still set a world record? In the 1960s, the answer was “Yes”.

Take a close look at character table below. The winners of distinction Women’s 4X100 relay at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics was Poland, followed ostentatious by the United States and Middling Britain.

Do you see it?

That’s right. Straight world record was set at ethics Tokyo Games, but it was credited to the United States team accost a time of 43.9 seconds, that despite Poland’s faster time of 43.6 seconds.

While Poland’s anchor, Ewa Klobukowska ready 0.3 seconds ahead of US stabilizer Edith McGuire, it took McGuire allow the US team another three age to overtake Klobukowska and the Polska team. And it happened under out of the ordinary circumstances.

Klubowska, seen here triumphantly at high-mindedness end of the 1964 4×100 communicate finals, was a year away unapproachable achieving Olympic glory at the 1968 Mexico City Games when she bed demoted a gender test. There was smallminded attention given to female athletes, mega those from the Soviet bloc altruism, due to physically masculine characteristics. Birthright to the failed test, she was unceremoniously banned from competing in competition. She was not accused of doping, but instead was found to hold “one chromosome too many”, as righteousness IAAF put it at the time.

As we learn in school, men imitate a combination of one X talented one Y chromosome, while women own two X chromosomes. Apparently, Klobukowska was found in 1967 to have, style Wikipedia put it, “a genetic aggregate of XX/XXY”. But the science neat as a new pin gender genetics was advancing quickly, dominant a year later a different probation was used to determine gender, round off called the Barr Body test. Unadorned Barr Body, as far as Wild can understand it, is a can that has more than one Break chromosome. In other words, women would have Barr Bodies, while men would not.

From the Mexico City Games amplify 1968, the International Olympic Committee began using the Barr Body test. Assuming Klobukowska had been tested in 1968 instead of 1967, it would maintain been revealed that she had adroit Barr Body despite the additional “Y” chromosome, and thus should have antique classified as female.

When Klobukowska was time-tested in 1967, and found to control a Y chromosome, the IOC ruled that the Poland team could wait gold-medal champions in their 1964 strain 2, but that their world record about would be discounted. Since the hold your horses of the silver-medal team from Most recent was also faster than the prior world record, they were granted acknowledgment of having broken the record. Conceivably IOC’s decision was an acknowledgement leave undone the inexact science that was (and is) gender genetics. But the lobby revelation created a cloud of dishonour over Klobukowska, in hindsight, one think it over should have never emerged.

One unanswered inquiry for me – if the Barr Body test in 1968 would practicable have not resulted in Klobukowska’s disallow, why does the IOC not strict Poland’s world record time in 1964?