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<\/p>\nTransgender women athletes are now excluded from women’s events at the Olympics after the International Olympic Committee agreed to a new eligibility policy on Thursday which aligns with U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order on sports ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Games.<\/p>\n
“Eligibility for any female category event at the Olympic Games or any other IOC event, including individual and team sports, is now limited to” what the IOC terms “biological women” or athletes assigned female at birth. The IOC said that determination would be made on the basis of a one-time SRY gene screening.<\/p>\n
It is unclear how many, if any, transgender women are competing at an Olympic level. No woman who transitioned after being assigned male at birth competed at the 2024 Paris Summer Games, though weightlifter Laurel Hubbard did at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 without winning a medal.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“It is not retroactive and does not apply to any grassroots or recreational sports programs,” said the IOC, whose Olympic Charter states that access to play sport is a human right.<\/p>\n
After an executive board meeting, the IOC published a 10-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.<\/p>\n
Coventry and the IOC have wanted a clear policy instead of continuing to advise sports’ governing bodies who previously have drafted their own rules.<\/p>\n
“At the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat,” Coventry, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming, said in a statement. “So, it is absolutely clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category.”<\/p>\n
She 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.<\/p>\n
WATCH | IOC bans transgender women athletes from competing in women’s events at the Olympics:<\/p>\n
IOC bans transgender female athletes from competing in women’s events at the Olympics<\/p>\n
IOC president Kirsty Coventry announces a new policy that will exclude transgender female athletes from competing in women’s Olympic events.<\/p>\n
Female eligibility was a strong theme in a seven-candidate IOC election last year \u2014 held after a furor around women’s boxing in Paris \u2014 when Coventry’s main rivals pledged a stronger policy to leading on the issue.<\/p>\n
“This was a priority for me way before President Trump came into his second term,” Coventry said. “There’s not been any pressure [on] us to deliver anything from anybody outside of the Olympic Movement.” <\/p>\n
Before the 2024 Paris Olympics, three top-tier sports \u2014 track and field, swimming and cycling \u2014 excluded transgender women who had been through male puberty. Semenya, who was assigned female at birth in South Africa and has high natural testosterone levels, won a European Court of Human Rights judgment in her years-long legal challenge to track and field’s rules which did not overturn them.<\/p>\n
The IOC document details its research that being born male gives physical advantages that a working group of experts believes are retained.<\/p>\n
“Males experience three significant testosterone peaks: In utero, in mini-puberty of infancy and beginning in adolescent puberty through adulthood,” the document said.<\/p>\n
It added this gives males “individual sex-based performance advantages in sports and events that rely on strength, power and\/or endurance.”<\/p>\n
The IOC said its expert group agreed the current gene test is “the most accurate and least intrusive method currently available.” It screened for “the SRY gene, a segment of DNA typically found on the Y chromosome that initiates male sex development in utero and indicates the presence of testes\/testicles.”<\/p>\n
Still, the mandatory gender screening \u2014 already conducted by the governing bodies of track and field, skiing and boxing \u2014 is likely to be criticized by human rights experts and activist groups.<\/p>\n
Track athletes challenged previous rules<\/p>\n
The IOC policy can, and likely will, be challenged at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in the Olympic body’s Swiss home city Lausanne, perhaps by an athlete acting alone.<\/p>\n
Track athletes Dutee Chand of India and Semenya challenged previous versions of their sport’s eligibility rules at the court.<\/p>\n
Any potential appeal would examine science underpinning IOC research which was not published Thursday. A case could occupy much of the near-28 months until the L.A. Olympics open.<\/p>\n
“As we know in today’s world,” Coventry said, “any and all rules and regulations at any point in time could always be challenged.” <\/p>\n
One of the two women’s boxing gold medallists at the center of the gender controversy in Paris, Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan, has passed her gene test and can return to competition, the World Boxing governing body said last week.<\/p>\n
The other Olympic boxing champion, Imane Khelif of Algeria, told CNN last month she would take a gene test to be eligible for the L.A. Olympics. She is reportedly preparing for a professional bout next month in Paris.<\/p>\n
The IOC document published on Thursday said the male performance advantage over biological women was “10-12 per cent in most running and swimming events,” at least 20 per cent in “most throwing and jumping events” but “can be greater than 100%” for explosive power events including “punching sports.” <\/p>\n
In the U.S., President Trump signed the executive order “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” in February last year, and pledged to deny visas to some athletes attempting to compete at the L.A Olympics. The order also threatened to “rescind all funds” from organizations that allowed transgender athletes to take part in women’s sports.<\/p>\n
Within months the U.S. Olympic body updated its guidance to national sports bodies citing an obligation to comply with the White House.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Transgender women athletes are now excluded from women’s events at the Olympics after the International Olympic Committee agreed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":562646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-562645","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}