The International Olympic Committee on Monday slowed the release of a report that the body was moving to ban athletes born male from competing in women’s Olympic events, saying “no decision has yet been made.”
A report in The Times of London said the ban on transgender women in women’s competitions would be implemented in early 2026 “following a scientific review of the evidence on the permanent physical benefits of being born male.”
The IOC insisted on the premature nature of the report, but did not refute the possibility of a new policy.
A spokesperson confirmed that medical and scientific director Dr Jane Thornton briefed IOC members last week at a meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, of the initial findings of a working group studying the issue. However, the spokesperson said in a statement that “the working group is continuing its discussions on this matter and no decision has yet been made. Further information will be provided in due course.”
The new IOC president, Kirsty Coventry, took over from Thomas Bach in June and three months later formed the working group on the protection of the women’s category made up of experts as well as representatives of the international federation to study the issue.
The conclusions and a new policy could be announced as early as the IOC session, scheduled for February before the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics.
Under Bach, the IOC refused to implement a universal rule on transgender participation in the Olympics, and transgender athletes remain eligible to participate. The international federation of each sport is authorized to set its own rules.
However, Coventry said in her first news conference after becoming IOC president that she believed Olympic sports should abandon the current piecemeal approach to establishing rules on transgender inclusion and instead implement a policy that applies to most or all sports.
“We understand there will be differences depending on the sport,” she said. “But it was very clear to the members that we must protect the women’s category, above all to guarantee fairness.
“We have to do it with a scientific approach and with the inclusion of international federations who have done a lot of work in this area.”
President Trump signed an executive order earlier this year banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports in U.S. schools and said he intends to apply the policy to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. The executive order directs the secretary of state to attempt to change the IOC’s rules on transgender participation and also directs immigration officials to deny admission to transgender women from other countries for the purpose of sports participation.
California Department of Education officials refused to comply with the order. However, Trump’s announcement prompted the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee to change its rules and ban transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports.
The most recent Olympic controversy over gender eligibility occurred at the Paris Games last summer when Algerian boxer Imane Khelif won the women’s welterweight gold medal a year after being disqualified from the World Championships for apparently failing a gender eligibility test.
The IOC allowed Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting to compete in the women’s division because their passports identified them as women. Yu-ting had been banned by the suspended International Boxing Assn. (IBA).
In a bid to identify athletes raised as female but who sometimes have physical advantages over men – called differences in sexual development (DSD) – international boxing this year introduced mandatory testing for athletes in the female category to detect a gene on the Y chromosome that triggers the development of male characteristics.
Other sports have created a series of thresholds to ban or allow transgender athletes from competing as women. World Athletics, the international governing body for athletics, bans transgender athletes who have reached male puberty. World Rugby bans transgender athletes from competing at the highest level. And World Aquatics allows transgender athletes who transitioned before the age of 12 to compete as women.
Very few transgender athletes participated in the Games. New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard has become the first openly transgender athlete to compete in a different gender category at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
“I don’t think we need to redo all the work that has been done. We can learn from the international federations and put together a working group that will look at this issue consistently and coherently,” Coventry said. “The overriding principle must be to protect the female category. »
