The International Olympic Committee is expected to announce a blanket ban on transgender women competing in women’s Olympic sports. Until now, the IOC has allowed transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports if they had reduced testosterone levels.
Officials said they expect to make the decision early next year, according to The Times. They also said that the decision comes after a science-based review of what they described as permanent physical advantages of being born male.
The committee’s medical and scientific director, Dr. Jane Thornton, presented initial findings of the review of transgender athletes and those with differences of sexual development (DSD) competing in women’s sports to IOC members last week. Those who attended told The Times that scientific evidence showed there were physical advantages to being born male that stayed with the athlete. They said the advantages stayed with athletes who took treatments to reduce testosterone.
What would the ban include?
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics were the first games to feature an openly transgender athlete, New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard. Since then, no other openly transgender athlete has competed in the games.
The policy will include those who transition genders and those born with DSD. This would include Swyer syndrome, which causes people to have male-typical chromosome patterns but female external and internal genitalia.
The decision to include DSD follows the controversy surrounding Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting during the 2024 Paris Olympics. Both won gold in their respective divisions, but the International Boxing Association disqualified both fighters after officials said they failed gender eligibility tests the previous year.
The disqualification was also controversial since IBA officials never said what kind of testing the women failed. Khelif had also just defeated Russian boxer Azalia Amineva, who was previously unbeaten. This was notable since the IBA is Russian-led.
The IOC permitted both women to compete in the women’s division, as their passports identified them as female. Both athletes have always identified themselves as women and competed in the women’s division.
Since then, the IBA has implemented mandatory sex testing and said Khelif would need to undergo testing if she wished to compete.
New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard was the first openly transgender athlete to compete at the Olympics.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics were the first games to have an openly transgender woman compete. New
According to The Times, IOC officials are ensuring the new policy is legally sound before it’s made official.
President Donald Trump made transgender athletes in female sports a major point of his second presidential campaign and subsequent administration. In February, he signed an executive order banning transgender people from competing in any women’s sports. He said that would include the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and that he would deny visas for transgender athletes trying to compete at the games.
How will the committee implement the rule?
The IOC could implement the rule like other sports governing bodies do, requiring this kind of testing.
In September, World Athletics began testing all female athletes to determine their eligibility for female sports, which included undergoing a cheek swab and blood test. FIS, the skiing and snowboarding governing body, began conducting the same policy, using a test that identifies the Y chromosome found in men.
The IOC has not released its policy yet, so it’s difficult to predict how it would enforce it.
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