BY OGUNYEMI ELIZABETH MODUPE
In her first major and perhaps more consequential decision since taking office last June, President Kirsty Coventry announced the global body’s new policy on the ‘Protection of the Female Category’, with DSD athletes also facing Olympic exclusion.
“We know this is a sensitive issue, but it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category,” the first African and woman to hold world sport’s top chair said Thursday in a video message where she detailed that all athletes wanting to compete in the female category moving forward will be vetted through a once-in-a-lifetime Sex Determining Region Y gene screening in order to determine their proper biological sex.
“At the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat, so it’s absolutely clear that it would not be fair. In addition, in some sports it would simply not be safe,” Coventry explained after the Executive Board’s meeting as she tried to straddle the thin, delicate line between the unfolding of fair competition and the right to personal privacy, while the IOC stressed that eligibility for any female category event at the Olympics or any other event, including individual and team sport, will now be purely limited to biological females.
“As a former athlete, I passionately believe in the rights of all Olympians to take part in fair competition. The policy that we have announced is based on science and has been led by medical experts,” the president of the Lausanne-based organisation said. “Every athlete must be treated with dignity and respect, and athletes will need to be screened only once in their lifetime. There must be clear education around the process and counselling available, alongside expert medical advice.”
The IOC, who had long opposed mandatory sex-testing after it deemed it violated athlete’s rights in the past, has now backpedalled on the issue which has recently escalated as a hot-button topic of public debate, with United States President Donald Trump the most notorious and powerful opposer to transgender athletes’ taking part in women’s competition.
While the global sporting body assured that the one-off SRY gene test would be carried out via a non-intrusive cheek-swab or saliva test, precedents of sex testing in sports have not been kind to those portraying it as unharmful. Examples of men transitioning to women in order to gain a competitive advantage, meanwhile, are marginal despite the challenging discussion, which has been ongoing for decades, gaining traction in the political arena of late.
Records indicate that New Zealander weightlifter Laurel Hubbard became the first transgender woman to compete at an Olympics after transitioning back in 2021, while Difference of Sex Development athletes like South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya, who won women’s 800m Olympic gold at London 2012 and Rio de Janeiro 2016 Games and has since retired, remain under threat as well, now with the extended pressure of the announced mandatory SRY test.
The IOC stated that the new policy will be enforced with the Los Angeles Summer Games in mind come 2028, Trump’s scheduled last year in office, and should be adopted by all international sports federations and governing bodies onward; though the global body noted that it should only apply to elite sport and not any grassroots or recreational programmes.
Per the IOC’s 10-page document outlining its new policy, transgender women who have transitioned from male to female, as well as DSD athletes, retain the advantages of going through male puberty over women who have not. “There is a 10-12% male performance advantage in most running and swimming events. There is a 20+ per cent male performance advantage in most throwing and jumping events. And the male performance advantage can be greater than 100 per cent in events that involve explosive power, eg in collision, lifting and punching sports,” the text lays out. “XY transgender athletes and athletes with XY-DSD typically have testes/testicles and testosterone levels in the male range. The clear majority are androgen-sensitive, meaning that their bodies are receptive to and make use of that testosterone during growth and development and throughout their athletic career.”
Kirsty Coventry took over for Thomas Bach last June.
Milos Bicanski/GETTY IMAGES
The debate surrounding transgender athletes participating in the women’s category has been a lengthy and complex one, however, and studies are still emerging on whether being born biologically male will continue to have advantages even after hormone therapy, or —as other studies show— it eventually equalises their performance. Paris 2024 experienced quite the gender row during its women’s boxing tournament after fighters Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan and Imane Khelif of Algeria competed and won medals despite having been disqualified from the previous year’s World Championships in New Delhi by the International Boxing Association for not passing their gender eligibility standards. The IOC insisted then that the case was is ‘not a transgender issue’ and the former finally cleared her gene test and can now return to competition, the current ruling governing body, World Boxing, recently confirmed.
“In light of the scientific consensus that males have a performance advantage in all sports and events that rely on strength, power and/or endurance irrespective of subsequent testosterone suppression or gender-affirming hormone treatment, the Olympic movement has a compelling interest in having a sex-based female category, because this is necessary to ensure fairness, safety and integrity in elite competition,” the IOC’s latest document states, while considering that SRY gene screening via saliva, cheek swab or blood sample “is accurate and unintrusive compared to other possible methods.”
Coventry, who took on the baton from outgoing leader Thomas Bach last June, is still pending a formal sit-down with Trump in order to further elaborate guidelines on his flagship stance, as well as address production and immigration concerns related to the upcoming Los Angeles Summer Games and Salt Lake City 2034 Winter Games. The American leader warned back in January that he wanted the IOC to change everything “having to do with this absolutely ridiculous subject” referring to transgender participation in sports, signed an Executive Order to that effect, and pushed then for the denial of visas for transgender females seeking to compete within US borders.
With more complex legal battles surely on the horizon after Semenya originally fought her case in court, the IOC has already pushed forward on the far-right politician’s agenda while the Olympic charter’s sixth Fundamental Principle advocating for “promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity” remains untouched. “The enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set forth in this Olympic Charter shall be secured without discrimination of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, sexual orientation, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status,” the text reads.
