Maximila Imali, a top Kenyan sprinter, has not lost her eligibility to compete in the Paris Olympics because she cheated. She failed a doping test. She didn’t break any rules.

Instead, she will miss this year’s Summer Games because she was born with a rare genetic variant that causes naturally elevated testosterone levels. And last March, the World Athletics Federation ruled that Ms. Imali’s biology gave her an unfair advantage in all cases against other women, effectively excluding them from international competition.

As a result, Ms Imali, 27, finds her Olympic dream in jeopardy and her career and livelihood in limbo.

Unless she agrees to lower her testosterone levels through medication – which she has not done – or she prevails in an appeal she has filed challenging the new rules, she and other intersex athletes will be banned from participating in all running, jumping and throwing events the increasingly restrictive and controversial rules governing women’s athletics.

The Legality of these rules is controversial as they have evolved and sports bodies try to balance fair play in women’s sports with the complicated issues of sport biological sex And Gender identity. But the application of the regulations continues to cause confusion for those affected: rule changes are sometimes made with little or no warning; Careers were forced to change abruptly or end at their peak; and embarrassment, humiliation and fears for personal safety.

“They are destroying our talent and our dignity,” Ms. Imali said of her appeal in a recent video interview. She said she shouldn’t be punished for giving birth because she didn’t do anything wrong.

“This talent was given to me by God,” she added, “and I use it as it is.”

The exact influence of muscle-building testosterone on the performance of elite athletes remains unclear. World Athletics, the governing body of track and field, has argued that intersex athletes are represented in elite sports at an exponentially higher rate than in the general female population. But the organization’s top medical officials recognized in 2021 that they can show an associated, but not a causal, relationship between testosterone levels and sporting performance in top female athletes.

Despite the uncertainty, athletics has introduced increasingly strict restrictions that have disrupted or altered the careers of not only Ms. Imali, but also bigger stars like South Africa’s Caster Semenya, a two-time Olympic champion, and Francine Niyonsaba, a 2016 Olympic silver medalist Burundi.

To continue her elite career, Ms. Imali could alter her body through medication or try competing against men – another prospect she flatly rejects. (“I am a woman,” she said.) Instead, she is appealing to the Swiss Court of Arbitration for Sports, the final arbiter of global sports disputes. A hearing is scheduled for the spring, her lawyers said.

Ms Imali has received legal aid from the court to help bear the costs of the arbitration proceedings, and their lawyers work on a pro bono basis. But the appeal process still costs tens of thousands of dollars – money she says she doesn’t have, which is why she’s trying to crowdfund her lawsuit.

“Access to justice is a serious issue,” said James Bunting, one of Ms. Imali’s Toronto-based lawyers.

Without a decision in her favor, Ms. Imali will not be eligible to participate in national or international events where prize money or sponsorship agreements could be awarded. At the same time, she and her partner struggle to care for their four-year-old son, look after their grandmother, and pay rent and school fees for their two younger sisters.

The case involves athletes who were born with a genetic condition called 46, XY DSD. Athletes with DSD trait 46, XY have genitalia that are not typically male or female; one X and one Y chromosome in each cell, the typical male pattern; and testosterone levels in the male range.

Ms. Imali grew up in the village of Moiben, Kenya, in a family — mother, grandmother, two sisters and a cousin she considered a brother — that sometimes couldn’t provide enough food for everyone every day. She said running was her chance to find hope.

In 2014, at the age of 18, she qualified for the 800-meter run at the Junior World Athletics Championships. She suffered a hamstring strain during the final and was eliminated, but was encouraged by the fact that she was among the fastest runners in the world in her age group.

However, a few months later her optimism was dashed. Ms Imali said doctors and officials from Athletics Kenya, the governing body for athletics in her country, told her she was no longer eligible to compete. At a hospital in the capital Nairobi, she said, she had to remove her clothes and undergo an examination – a familiar story among intersex athletes – and then was told by a doctor that she could pay for surgery to make her “pure.” “Girl.”

Ms Imali said she was confused. She said she never received any documents or test results and was only told at the hospital that she had high testosterone levels. Her mother assured her that she was a girl, and until then no one, including her, had ever doubted it. She refused the operation.

“I can’t just destroy my body,” she said.

In 2015, the Court of Arbitration for Sport lifted track and field’s then-restrictions on female competitors with naturally high testosterone levels, a condition known as hyperandrogenism. The court, in a case involving an Indian sprinterfound insufficient evidence that hyperandrogenic athletes gained such a large performance advantage that they should be banned from competing against women.

The ruling meant Ms Imali could run freely again, but she soon encountered a personal hurdle: she gave up the sport for a time to care for her mother, who had fallen ill and later died in August 2016. The cause was a brain tumor, Ms. Imali said, but she blamed herself for causing her mother so much stress.

In 2017 she resumed her career and qualified for the World Athletics Championships in the 400 meters. But in 2019, her career stalled again after athletics tried to introduce new eligibility restrictions and Ms. Semenya lost a landmark decision in their own case.

In that case, the tribunal upheld by a 2-1 vote a ban on intersex athletes in competitions beyond 400 meters to the mile – where their advantage in strength, muscle mass and oxygen-carrying capacity was considered most pronounced – unless they matched their testosterone levels lowered to the female area. The decision stopped Ms Semenya from defending her 800m title at the Olympic Games in Tokyo.

The court acknowledged at the time that the ruling was discriminatory, but said it was “necessary, appropriate and proportionate” to ensure a “level playing field” in women’s events.

Ms Imali was banned from her most high-profile events and switched to shorter races. In 2022 she set Kenyan records 100 meters and 200 meters and won a silver medal in the 200 at the African Championships. However, in March 2023, her career was stopped again, possibly permanently.

World Athletics expanded existing restrictions and announced that intersex athletes would not be allowed to compete in all women’s competitions unless they lower their testosterone levels to 2.5 nanomoles per liter, half the level previously allowed.

The tighter restrictions came after two intersex athletes performed impressively in previously unrestricted competition at the 2021 Tokyo Games: Christine Mboma from Namibiawho won a silver medal in the 200 meters at the age of 18, and Ms. Niyonsaba, who came fifth in the 10,000 meters.

Sebastian Coe, the president of World Athletics, said no individual athlete had prompted the stricter eligibility rules. But without her, he said, “no woman will ever win a sporting event again.”

Ms Imali said the rule change shocked her but also left her unsure. People mock her, call her a man, she said. She fears losing her job with the Kenya Police, a benefit of her running career, which without athletics is her only way to support herself and her family.

“They’re not just destroying me,” she said. “You destroy the people who depend on me.”

In her appeal, her lawyers are expected to argue that there is not enough evidence to show that intersex athletes have an unfair advantage in every athletics event. Until then, Ms. Imali and other affected athletes face what they say is an impossible choice: undergo treatments to maintain lower testosterone levels that they say are unnecessary and potentially harmful, or give up their livelihoods.

“They must understand that we are human beings,” Ms. Imali said, “and they must respect human rights.”