The International Olympic Committee is about to ban trans women from participating in the women’s series.
Kirsty Coventry is the President of the International Olympic Committee. ZumaWire / MVPHOTOS
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) plans to ban trans women from participating in the women’s series at the Olympics, reports The Times. According to the newspaper, the matter is already being hammered out at the beginning of next year.
According to the Times, the decision is based on an extensive scientific study that has evaluated the impact of biological factors on sports performance.
IOC experts have concluded that athletes identified as male at birth retain advantages even if their testosterone levels are later medically lowered.
IOC medical and scientific director, former Olympic rower Jane Thornton presented the preliminary results of the study at a meeting in Lausanne last week. According to The Times’ sources, the presentation was “fact-based and unemotional” and received widely positive feedback from committee members.
The new policy is to be officially confirmed at the beginning of the year, probably in connection with the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics in February. However, the decision is not believed to affect the Italian Winter Olympics.
The new chairman of the IOC Kirsty Coventry has emphasized that he wants to protect the women’s competition category and create fair conditions for all athletes.
The sports association’s decision
Until now, the IOC has left the decision-making power on the participation of trans women to the sports federations. For example, the umbrella organizations of athletics and swimming have previously banned trans women from participating in women’s competitions.
The new practice is also expected to apply to so-called DSD (difference of sexual development) athletes, i.e. athletes who are born with male chromosomes and a high level of testosterone, even if they grew up as women.
According to The Times, the International Olympic Committee is currently working to ensure that the decision is legally binding.
The decision is believed to have been spurred by the scandalous incidents at the Paris 2024 Olympics, in which Algeria Imane Khelif and Taiwan Lin Yu-Ting won the gold. Both had been excluded from the World Boxing Championships a year earlier due to ambiguities. The ambiguities were precisely related to the gender definition rules.
The case sparked a wide-ranging debate about the fairness of competitions and increased pressure on the IOC to clarify gender and equality issues.