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Notes -
Left-wing poasters on the Imane Khelif row are well aware that Khelif is not trans, and are pointing and laughing at the ignorance of right-wing poasters who suggest that she is. The left-wing argument against policing female athletes' biology (namely that it is demeaning to the athletes, and that the intersex corner cases that it throws up are hard to adjudicate) long predates trans being a shouting issue.
The simple cheating case which sex testing exists to catch (a non-intersex cis man entering a female event) has never happened in the Olympics - and as far as I am aware it hasn't happened in international-level athletics either. What sex testing throws up is arguments about whether certain AFAB (a rare occasion where "asssigned X at birth" is accurate and useful terminology) intersex people are "real women". And the science to adjudicate those fairly while maintaining competitive balance has only been done for middle-distance running.
I think sport needs to decide what a woman is and enforce it - particularly in a world where there are biologically male people with "woman" on their government ID - but I understand the case for throwing up your hands and saying "can't be done" given how destructive intersex-in-women's-sports rows are.
Trans identified males (non-intersex) taking over female sports has been happening at all levels of competition (including international) for several years now.
https://www.shewon.org/
Documents the phenomenon closely, with citations.
Number of Female Athletes 717 Number of Medals* 1055 Number of Competitions 522 Number of Sports 37
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The question is: how much of that is because sex testing was mandatory? It could be that sex testing never had any useful effect (“my rock keeps tigers away”) or that it was quite effective at dissuading would-be cheaters. The argument “we didn't catch any cheaters, so therefore sex testing was always useless” is not logical.
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