You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker.

Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. I do hope you enjoy it.

Competition is intrinsic to the human love affair with sport, but so is the concept of fairness.

Winning by way of cheating, usually by way of performance-enhancing drugs,

is a transgression which eats away at the very foundations of sport.

But what of a much more nuanced and complicated question of fairness,

which is increasingly preoccupying the world's sporting rule makers?

Is it fair for athletes who were born biologically male to compete as females if they choose to make a gender transition after

puberty? In recent months, the question has stirred heated controversy, with high-profile

sports people like former tennis star Martina Navratilova

voicing alarm at the prospect of women's sport being dominated by transgendered competitors.

Her comments have been condemned as transphobic by prominent trans athletes.

My guest is former champion British swimmer turned sports commentator

Sharon Davis. How well is sport coping with the complexities of gender identity?

Sharon Davis, welcome to Hart. Thank you. You've spent a lifetime in sport, of course,

as a champion swimmer, a competitor, but also as a commentator and an analyst.

And I want to begin with this concept of fairness in sport.

What does fairness mean to you?

I think it just means equal opportunities between the sexes.

So the opportunities to win medals, to win scholarships, to get the profile,

to create a platform, to get sponsorship, to have a career, you know, at being a successful athlete.

It means, I suppose, all sorts of things. It just means a level playing field as much as we can

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