Transgender women athletes will no longer be permitted to compete in women’s events at the Olympics following the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) approval of a new eligibility policy on yesterday. The decision aligns with an executive order on sports issued by US President Donald Trump, ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
The IOC stated that “eligibility for any female category event at the Olympic Games or any other IOC event, including both individual and team sports, is now restricted to biological females.” The determination will be made through a mandatory genetic test conducted once during an athlete’s career.
It remains uncertain how many, if any, transgender women are currently competing at an Olympic level. No woman who switched from male to female participated in the 2024 Paris Summer Games, however, weightlifter Laurel Hubbard competed at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 without securing a medal.
The new eligibility policy, which will take effect for the LA Olympics in July 2028, is designed to “protect fairness, safety, and integrity in the female category,” according to the IOC.
“This policy is not retroactive and does not apply to grassroots or recreational sports programs,” the IOC clarified. The organization’s Olympic Charter emphasizes that access to sports is a fundamental human right.
Following an executive board meeting, the IOC released a comprehensive 10-page policy document that also imposes restrictions on female athletes like two-time Olympic champion runner Caster Semenya, who has medical conditions classified as differences in sex development (DSD).
The IOC and its president, Kirsty Coventry, have sought to establish a definitive policy rather than allowing individual sports governing bodies to create their own regulations.
“At the Olympic Games, even the slightest margins can determine victory or defeat,” Coventry, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming, remarked in a statement. “Therefore, it is unequivocally unfair for biological males to compete in the female category.”
Coventry initiated a review focused on “protecting the female category” as one of her first major actions last June, making history as the first woman to lead the Olympic organization in its 132-year existence.
The topic of female eligibility was a prominent issue during a seven-candidate IOC election last year, held after controversy surrounding women’s boxing in Paris, when Coventry’s main opponents advocated for a more stringent policy on this matter.
Prior to the 2024 Paris Olympics, three major sports, track and field, swimming, and cycling, barred transgender women who had undergone male puberty. Semenya, who was assigned female at birth in South Africa and possesses naturally high testosterone levels, achieved a judgment from the European Court of Human Rights in her prolonged legal battle against track and field regulations, though this did not overturn those rules.
By: Magdalene Agyeiwaa Sarpong