Maria José Martínez Patiño
Spanish athlete
Maria José Martínez Patiño (born 10 July 1961) is a Spanish former hurdler, whose dismissal from the Spanish Olympic team in 1986 for failing the sex verification test is a notable moment in the history of sex verification in sports.
Martínez Patiño was dismissed after a competition that would have set her up for participation at the 1988 Summer Olympics. She was shamed publicly when she participated in a hurdles event in the Spanish national championships in 1986, but fought the loss of her IAAF license successfully and was able to compete for participation in the 1992 Olympics. Since then she has written about her experience, and her test and its fallout has become a highly publicized and frequently cited case concerning sex testing as well as the privacy of athletes.
Athletic career
Martínez Patiño participated in the 100 metres hurdles, where her best time is 13.71 (Madrid 1983). Her best performance in international competition was 13.78, at the 1983 World Championships in Athletics in Helsinki.
Sex testing
Martínez Patiño is an intersex woman who has androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS). She passed a sex test in 1983 at the IAAF World Championships, and received her "certificate of femaleness". However, she failed the sex chromatin test in 1985, and thus was ruled ineligible to participate in women's athletics. The test was taken during the 1985 World University Games in Kobe, Japan, as a result of her having forgotten to bring the result of the sex test that she had passed two years earlier.
“Maria José Martínez Patiño” enters the record as spanish athlete. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Maria, José and Martínez can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Maria José Martínez Patiño” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Maria, José and Martínez provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19832435. VIAF identifies the subject as 87557234. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1961, 1986, 1988 and 1992.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Maria José Martínez Patiño”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Maria José Martínez Patiño primary sources, Maria José Martínez Patiño archive and Maria research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Maria José Martínez Patiño”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Maria José Martínez Patiño” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.