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Toxa Avdeyev / Via youtube.com
Toxa Avdeyev / Via youtube.com
Toxa Avdeyev / Via youtube.com
Toxa Avdeyev / Via youtube.com
Early Monday, Mayor Marty Walsh said he would not sign a contract that would have taxpayers pay for budget overages.
Bruce Bennett / Getty Images
Early Monday, Mayor Marty Walsh announced he would not sign a contract that would leave Boston taxpayers responsible for excess costs to host the Olympics until he had a better understanding of the proposed budget of hosting the events.
By Monday afternoon, it was reported that Boston would no longer pursue hosting the Olympics. The AP reports the United States Olympic Committee had the final say in the decision.
The potential to host the Olympics was unpopular amongst Boston residents. Los Angeles could take Boston's place as the US bid to host.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates and follow BuzzFeed News on Twitter.
Last year, 19-year-old Indian sprinter Dutee Chand challenged the international rules banning her from competing in women’s races because of her naturally high testosterone. Monday’s landmark ruling in her favor is dividing the scientific and athletic communities.
Rafiq Maqbool / AP
On Monday, the so-called "Supreme Court of Sport" ruled that 19-year-old Indian sprinter Dutee Chand, as well as all other female athletes who test positive for naturally high levels of testosterone, cannot be excluded from competing in female athletic competitions.
Chand was banned from competing last July, after winning two gold medals at the Asian Junior Athletics Championship in Taipei. Although she tested negative for doping, the Athletic Federation of India asked that her hormone levels be tested after growing suspicions around her "masculine build" and athletic ability.
Chand's tests showed that her blood possessed very high levels of natural testosterone, a hormone that helps with things like muscle strength, bone density, and the production of red blood cells — possibly giving her an advantage on the track field.
According to rules adopted in 2011 by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), track and field's global governing body, as well as the International Olympics Committee, female athletes must have testosterone levels under 10 nanometers per liter — the lower bound of what's considered normal for males — in order to compete.
The regulations stated that women who exceeded this limit must undergo hormonal treatments or surgeries to lower their bodies' natural production of testosterone, or otherwise be excluded from competing.
Chand, whose blood testosterone exceeded IAAF's limit, chose to do neither. "I want to remain who I am and compete again. I have lived my life as a girl," Chand told The Indian Express last year.
Last September, she appealed her case and also sought a much bigger target: overturning the international rules dictating which women can compete.
On Monday, a three-member panel on the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland ruled in Chand's favor, on the grounds that limiting female competitors based on testosterone has not been shown as necessary for ensuring fair competition.
The CAS has given the IAAF two years to compile scientific evidence establishing that high testosterone is enough to confer a significant advantage to female athletes as compared to their peers.
But for now, the ruling means that all women — regardless of their natural hormone levels — will be allowed to compete.
"Dutee took a huge and courageous risk with her decision to challenge a policy she felt was unfair to her and to all women athletes," Katrina Karkazis, a bioethicist at Stanford University who studies gender and athletics, told BuzzFeed News by email. "It's a policy that affected all women so [its] suspension is an historic victory for women's equality in sport."
Chand, on the left, after winning a silver medal on the 200-meter race at the Asian Athletics Championship in 2013.
Manjunath Kiran / Getty Images
"Testosterone certainly matters biologically in the performance of athletes," Alice Dreger, a bioethicist at Northwestern University, told BuzzFeed News by email.
"That said, to limit women to a certain level of testosterone, and not men, is to act as if testosterone naturally belongs to men and not women," Dreger added. "That's weird. And I'm not sure why it isn't also sexist."
Things get murkier in the case of elite athletes, where extraordinary biology is the norm. For example, although just 1 in 20,000 women in the general population are born with a Y chromosome (typically the marker of a man), in elite female athletes that number is closer to 1 in 420, according to Eric Vilain, a medical geneticist who researches disorders of sex development at UCLA.
As scientists learn more and more about the many ways in which biological sex is a messy spectrum rather than a tidy binary, it's become increasingly difficult to determine where — and whether — to draw a gender line in sports.
The problem has been around since the 1930s, when female athletes were subjected to physical inspections in the nude, to root out so-called "sex impostors."
In the late 1960s the IOC began a "more dignified" testing for sex based on chromosomes, but perplexingly, XY females cropped up all over the place, and the protocol was ditched in 1999. Since 2011, testosterone was the only marker used to differentiate between the two sexes in sports.
"It is an imperfect marker in the sense that it does not explain all the sex differences in performance," Vilain told BuzzFeed News via email, citing other physiological differences, such as skeletal shape, that can confer an athletic advantage. But, he says, "it is one of the best markers we have that is both relevant to athletic performance and very different between men and women."
For Vilain, who advised the IOC on its testosterone policy, the rules are there to help the majority of women trying to compete on a fair playing field. "Separating men and women in sports competition allows women to win," he said.
Chand's win will "push authorities to rely on declaration of gender," Vilain added. "And that would be a disservice to the vast majority of women who want to compete on a fair basis."
Forget everything you know about the Bills.
Just ask Marcell.
Quarterbacks don't have time to think, let alone make their reads and pass.
Tom Szczerbowski / Grant Halverson / Tom Szczerbowski / Rick Stewart / Getty Images
This list is voted on by the players. Who knows better than the pros?
BuffaloRumblings.com / Via buffalorumblings.com
Da'Norris Searcy will surely be missed in Buffalo. But here's a silver lining: he was out with an injury in week 15. In that game, his backup, Bacarri Rambo, picked off Aaron Rodgers twice. Here's the kicker: Rodgers only threw five interceptions all season.
Side note: Buffalo also lost Kiko Alonso. But for argument's sake, Kiko Alonso didn't play a single snap last year.
Rick Stewart / Getty Images
Where’s the best place to enjoy America’s past time?
Team: Tampa Bay Rays
Capacity: 31,042
Food Highlight: Rays Cuban Sandwich
The fixed roof seriously detracts from the ~feel~ of a baseball game: No view, no breeze, and there are lots of obstructed views. It's lacking pretty much everything that makes the sport great for fans, so sadly it takes the bottom seed.
EaglesFanInTampa / Via en.wikipedia.org
Team: Oakland Athletics
Capacity: 35,067
Food Highlight: A slice from West Side gastropub
It's pretty bold for a stadium that barely fits 35,000 to call itself a 'coliseum'. The concourses are super narrow, making the place extra claustrophobic, and an entire section of perfectly fine seating is covered in tarp and reserved for Raiders games.
Kai Schreiber CC BY-SA / Via Flickr: genista
Gregor Smith CC BY-NC-ND
On 27 July 2012, Bradley Wiggins rang the bell that signalled the start of the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. Three years later, we asked BuzzFeed UK readers for their memories of the games.
Stu Forster / Getty Images
"From the second the kid started singing 'Jerusalem', I was a goner! I loved every bit of it, and cried out of pride throughout the whole thing. It gave me a spark of hope that maybe, just maybe, we might just have a good games!"
Submitted by Joolz
"Just feeling so proud to be British – which I think can be difficult in this country."
Submitted by Jo
"It was SO GOOD! J.K. Rowling reading, massive Voldemort puppet, the Queen jumping out of a helicopter with James Bond, Shakespeare, and Ken Branagh! It was just the epitome of British creative eccentricity!"
Submitted by Anonymous
"The opening ceremony was fantastic, the torch itself was simply stunning. It was a very British ceremony which was understated in a way that knew it couldn't compete with Beijing – however, there was undeniably a feelgood factor provided."
Submitted by Meg
"I was round my boyfriend's house and we had a get-together. There was wine and family and friends. I remember getting emotional when the last Olympic ring was 'crafted' and rose to join the others. But the most emotional moment was Team GB entering the stadium to 'Heroes'. I felt this swell of patriotic happiness. What an entrance!"
Submitted by Alice
"The giant Voldemort was legitimately the best thing I have ever witnessed in my whole life. Also, Rowan Atkinson."
Submitted by Anonymous
Pool / Getty Images
