The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is banning transgender women from competing in all women’s events.
This restriction applies to eligibility for any women’s category event olympic gamesor any other IOC event, including individual and team sports.
The policy is not retroactive, and “does not apply to any grassroots or recreational sporting events”, the IOC said in a statement, adding that it “protects fairness, safety and integrity in the women’s category”.
Those events will now be limited to biological females, determined based on a one-time test for the SRY gene, which is “fixed throughout life and offers highly accurate evidence that an athlete has experienced male sexual development,” the IOC said.
The new policy of the organization is in line with US President Donald Trump Executive order on women’s sports ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Games, the first Olympics where the new rules will be implemented.
It is not clear how many, if any, transgender Women are competing at the Olympic level.
No woman born male has competed paris 2024 olympics.
Runner Caster Semenya, a two-time Olympic champion who has a medical condition called Difference in Sex Development (DSD), is among those affected by the change.
IOC President Kirsty Coventry will soon set up a “women’s safety” review. After becoming the first woman to lead an Olympic organization in its 132-year history last June.
Making a U-turn on the previous policy, she wanted to bring in a universal rule for competitors in women’s elite sports after years of fragmented regulation, which led to some major controversies.
In the statement, he said that even the smallest difference “can be the difference between victory and defeat”.
Ms Coventry said: “So, it’s quite clear that it would not be appropriate for biological males to compete in the women’s category. Furthermore, in some sports it would not be safe at all.”
IOC President Kirsty Coventry. Photo: Reuters
Women’s eligibility was one of the main issues in the IOC elections last year when Coventry’s main rivals said they would adopt a stronger policy.
Before the Games in Paris, track and field, swimming and cycling had already passed rules excluding transgender women who had gone through male puberty.
The IOC pointed to its own research, saying that being born male confers physical advantages that persist.
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“Males experience three significant testosterone peaks: in utero, in the mini-puberty of infancy, and at the beginning of adolescent puberty through adulthood,” the document states.
It states that this gives men “individual gender-based performance advantages in sports and events that rely on strength, power and/or endurance.”
Sky Sports correspondent Rob Harris called it a “landmark decision”, partly motivated by “growing concerns about the possibility of physical advantages being retained by transgender women who have gone through male puberty”.
The IOC sees itself as “protecting the women’s category at the Olympics for biological women” as well as ensuring the safety of competitors, especially in sports such as boxing, where physical advantages “can be potentially dangerous”.
There was “huge pressure” on the IOC, Harris said, not least from Mr Trump, who at a fundraiser on Wednesday, “reiterated his desire to keep transgender women out of women’s sporting events”.
