IOC issues ban on transgender athletes

The International Olympic Committee has banned transgender women from competing in all female events.

The restriction applies to eligibility for any female category event at the Olympic Games, or any other IOC event, including individual and team sports.

The policy is not retroactive and does not apply “to any grassroots or recreational sports programmes”, the IOC said in a statement, adding that it “protects fairness, safety and integrity in the female category”.

They will now be limited to biological females, determined based on a one-time test for the SRY gene, which “is fixed throughout life and represents highly accurate evidence that an athlete has ​experienced male sex development”, the IOC said.

The organisation’s new policy aligns with US President Donald Trump’s executive order on women’s sports ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

It is unclear how many, if any, transgender women are competing at an Olympic level. No woman who transitioned from being born male competed at the 2024 Paris Summer Games.

The eligibility policy that will apply from the LA Olympics in July 2028 “protects fairness, safety and integrity in the female category,” the IOC said.

After an executive board meeting, the IOC published a ten-page policy document which also restricts female athletes such as two-time Olympic champion runner Caster Semenya with medical conditions known as differences in sex development, or DSD.

The IOC and its president Kirsty Coventry, have wanted a clear policy instead of continuing to advise sports’ governing bodies who previously have drafted their own rules.

Coventry set up a review of “protecting the female category” as one of her first big decisions last June as the first woman to lead the Olympic body in its 132-year history.

Female eligibility was a strong theme in a seven-candidate IOC election last year when Coventry’s main rivals pledged a stronger policy to lead on the issue.

Before the 2024 Paris Olympics, three top-tier sports – track and field, swimming and cycling – already passed rules excluding transgender women who had been through male puberty.

The IOC document details its research that being born male gives physical advantages that are retained.

“Males experience three significant testosterone peaks: in utero, in mini-puberty of infancy and beginning in adolescent puberty through adulthood,” the document said.

It added this gives males “individual sex-based performance advantages in sports and events that rely on strength, power and/or endurance.”

(SKY SPORTS)