Page 20 - THE INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE’S ACCOUNTABILITY FOR HARMFUL CONSEQUENCES OF THE OLYMPIC GAMES- A MULTI-METHOD INTERNATIONAL LEGAL ANALYSIS Ryan Gautier

Chapter One – Introduction
for women’s participation. Eleven women participated in the 800m run. Reporters claimed that five of the women dropped out of the race entirely, and five more collapsed at the finish line, exhausted.44 This claim either forced the hand of the IOC, or allowed the IOC to justify, barring women from long-distance running until 1960. For more than one hundred years, women struggled to participate in the same disciplines as men,45 with the final barrier—ski jumping—falling only in the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. Difficulties have also arisen as National Olympic Committees (‘NOCs’), the organisations for each country that sends athletes to the Games, have refused to send female athletes as recently as the 2012 Summer Olympics, necessitating the IOC’s intervention.46 Other issues such as sex-testing of female athletes also have human rights implications.47 These issues are considered to be of a sporting nature, related to the conduct of sport, and are often referred to as the core of lex sportiva, rules within and for the system of sport.48 For instance non- discrimination is enshrined in the Olympic Charter, and it is this provision that is applied to the participation of women in sport in recent years.49 Rules such as these, argue sporting bodies and some academics, are not for domestic courts to weigh in on, and indeed, courts have often shied away from doing so.50
44 These claims have since been disputed. Jere Longman, ‘How the Women Won’ New York Times Magazine (23 June 1996) <http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/23/magazine/how-the-women-won.html?pagewanted=1> accessed 20 March 2015; Roger Robinson, ‘‘Eleven Wretched Women’: What Really Happened in the First Olympic Women’s 800m’ (Running Times 14 May 2012) < http://www.runnersworld.com/rt-columns/eleven-wretched- women> accessed 20 March 2015.
45 Olympic competitions are separated by sport, discipline, and event. A sport is an activity that is governed by an international federation for sport (‘IF’). A discipline is a sub-element of the sport, which is comprised of one or more events. Thus, ‘skating’ would be a sport governed by the International Skating Union. The disciplines would be figure skating, short-track speed skating, and speed skating. The events would include, for instance, 10000m, 5000m, team pursuit, and so forth.
46 Owen Gibson, ‘Saudi Arabia Sends Women to Olympic Games’ The Guardian (London, 12 July 2012) <http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2012/jul/12/saudi-arabia-women-olympic-games> accessed 19 March 2015.
47 Emily J. Cooper, ‘Gender Testing in Athletic Competitions—Human Rights Violations: Why Michael Phelps is Praised and Caster Semenya is Chastised’ (2010–2011) The Journal of Gender, Race and Justice 233; Raheel Saleem, ‘The Olympic Meddle: The International Olympic Committee’s Intrusion of Athletes’ Privacy Through the Discriminatory Practice of Gender Verification Testing’ (2010) 28 John Marshall Journal of Computer and Information Law 49. See also Juliet Macur, ‘Sex-Verification Policy Is Criticized as a Failure’ New York Times (New York, 26 June 2012) B12.
48 See Antoine Duval, ‘Lex Sportiva: A Playground for Transnational Law’ (2013) 19 European Law Journal 822, 827. Some authors view lex sportiva as solely located in judgements of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (‘CAS’), see James A.R. Nafziger, ‘Lex Sportiva’ (2004) 4 The International Sports Law Journal 3.
49 International Olympic Committee, Olympic Charter (2014) Fundamental Principles of Olympism ¶6, Rule 2.6.
50 See Sagen v. Vancouver Organising Committee, 2009 BCCA 522; Martin v. International Olympic Committee,
740 F. 2d 670, 677 (9th Cir. 1984).
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