{"id":350421,"date":"2026-03-27T10:40:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T10:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/350421\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T10:40:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T10:40:08","slug":"new-zealand-australia-say-olympic-gender-rules-bring-clarity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/350421\/","title":{"rendered":"New Zealand, Australia say Olympic gender rules bring ‘clarity’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"NZOC<\/p>\n

\nNZOC chief executive Nicki Nicol.
\nPhoto: Photosport\n<\/p>\n

New Zealand’s Olympic Committee said Friday that an IOC ruling<\/a> that only “biological females” will be allowed to compete in women’s events would bring greater “clarity” and “fairness” to future Games.<\/p>\n

New Zealand famously fielded transgender weightlifter Laurel Hubbard at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021<\/a> in a controversial first.<\/p>\n

Transgender women will in future be prevented from taking part, as will athletes with differences in sexual development (DSD).<\/p>\n

NZOC chief executive Nicki Nicol said the organisation recognised the “extensive consultation and expert input that has informed this policy”, particularly from athletes.<\/p>\n

She said it would bring “greater clarity, consistency and fairness to eligibility for the female category at the Olympic level”.<\/p>\n

“This is a complex and sensitive area that directly affects people, not just policy,” she added.<\/p>\n

The IOC changes will mean testing for gender to determine eligibility to take part in women’s events from the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics onwards.<\/p>\n

The IOC is abandoning rules it brought in in 2021 which allowed individual federations to decide their own policy and is instead implementing a policy across all Olympic sports.<\/p>\n

After competing in 2021 Hubbard, who failed in all of her lifting attempts in Tokyo, said she was aware of the controversy surrounding her participation.<\/p>\n

Friday’s NZOC comments did not refer to Hubbard, who has kept a very low profile since her Games appearance.<\/p>\n

New Zealand’s government has ordered a rethink of transgender sporting participation in the past year, advising governing body Sport NZ in July 2025 to stop all work on its inclusive transgender principles for community sport<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Also reacting to Thursday’s IOC announcement, which signalled a major shift of policy, Australian Olympic Committee president Ian Chesterman said the IOC had comprehensively investigated what he called a “complex issue”.<\/p>\n

“Without doubt this is a challenging and complex subject and at the AOC we approach it with empathy and understanding.”<\/p>\n

He added: “This decision provides clarity for elite female athletes who compete at the highest level and demonstrates a commitment to fairness, safety and integrity in Olympic competition, all of which are fundamental principles of the Olympic Movement.<\/p>\n

“As the IOC has stated, at the highest level of sport the smallest margins can determine outcomes, and clarity around eligibility is critical for female athletes to continue to compete on a level playing field.”<\/p>\n

-AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NZOC chief executive Nicki Nicol. Photo: Photosport New Zealand’s Olympic Committee said Friday that an IOC ruling that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":["post-350421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}