IOC inches toward ban on transgender athletes

The International Olympic Committee pumped the brakes on a report Monday that the physique was poised to ban athletes born male from competing in ladies’s Olympic occasions, saying that “no decisions have been taken yet.”

A report in The Times of London said that the ban on transgender ladies in feminine competitors can be applied early in 2026 “after a science-based review of evidence about permanent physical advantages of being born male.”

The IOC insisted the report was untimely but didn’t refute that a new coverage was forthcoming.

A spokesperson confirmed that medical and scientific director Dr. Jane Thornton up to date IOC members last week at a assembly in Lausanne, Switzerland, on the initial findings of a working group learning the issue. However, the spokesperson said in a assertion that “the working group is continuing its discussions on this topic and no decisions have been taken yet. Further information will be provided in due course.”

New IOC president Kirsty Coventry succeeded Thomas Bach in June and three months later fashioned the Protection of the Female Category working group made up of consultants as properly as representatives of worldwide federation to research the issue.

The findings and a new coverage might be announced as soon as the IOC session, scheduled in February forward of the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics.

Under Bach, the IOC declined to apply a common rule on transgender participation in the Olympics, and transgender athletes stay eligible to take part. Each sport’s worldwide federation is allowed to set its own guidelines.

However, Coventry said in her first news convention after changing into IOC president that she believes Olympic sports activities ought to do away with the current piecemeal method to setting guidelines on transgender inclusion and instead implement a coverage that applies to most or all sports activities.

“We understand that there will be differences depending on the sport,” she said. “But it was very clear from the members that we have to protect the female category, first and foremost to ensure fairness.

“We have to do it with a scientific approach and with the inclusion of the international federations who have done a lot of work in that area.”

President Trump signed an government order early this yr banning transgender athletes from competing in ladies’s sports activities in U.S. colleges and said he intends to apply the coverage at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028. The order directs the Secretary of State to attempt to change IOC guidelines on transgender participation and also directs immigration officers to refuse admission to transgender ladies from other international locations for the needs of sports activities participation.

California Department of Education officers refused to comply with the order. However, Trump’s announcement prompted the U.S Olympic and Paralympic Committee to change their guidelines and ban transgender athletes from collaborating in ladies’s sports activities.

The most current Olympics controversy over gender eligibility occurred at the Paris Games last summer time when boxer Imane Khelif of Algeria gained the ladies’s welterweight gold medal a yr after being disqualified from the World Championships for reportedly failing a gender eligibility take a look at.

The IOC allowed Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting to compete in the ladies’s division because their passports recognized them as feminine. Yu-ting had been banned by the suspended International Boxing Assn. (IBA).

In an attempt to determine athletes raised as feminine but who sometimes carry bodily benefits of males — called Differences of intimacyual Development (DSD) — worldwide boxing this yr launched obligatory assessments for athletes in the feminine class to detect a gene on the Y chromosome that triggers the development of male traits.

Other sports activities have created a vary of thresholds to ban or permit transgender athletes to compete as ladies. World Athletics, the worldwide governing physique for monitor and area, bans transgender athletes who have undergone male puberty. World Rugby forbids transgender athletes from competing at the best degree. And World Aquatics permits transgender athletes who transitioned before the age of 12 to compete as ladies.

Very few transgender athletes have taken half in the Games. New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard turned the first brazenly transgender athlete to compete in a different gender class in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

“I don’t think we need to redo all the work that’s been done — we can learn from the international federations and set up a task force that will look at this constantly and consistently,” Coventry said. “The overarching principle must be to protect the female category.”