This outcome has been expected for months now but today the International Olympic Committee (IOC) finally announced its decision on trans athletes. Trans women will not be allowed to compete against women in the games and genetic testing will be required.
The decision, the most consequential since Kirsty Coventry was elected last year as the first woman to serve as president of the I.O.C., followed a board meeting and months of speculation over the organization’s policy on one of the most contentious issues facing global sports. The rules will be applicable from the next Olympics, in Los Angeles in 2028.
When Ms. Coventry, a former Olympic champion swimmer from Zimbabwe, campaigned to lead the organization, she frequently said how important it was to protect the women’s category amid broader — and often bitter — debates about the participation of transgender athletes in sporting competitions.
“At the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat,” Ms. Coventry said in a statement announcing the news. “So, it is absolutely clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category. In addition, in some sports it would simply not be safe.”
It has literally taken years to get someone into this position who is willing to grant the obvious fact that having biological men competing against women is not fair. Even now there are people eager to denounce the IOC for stating the obvious.
Payoshni Mitra, executive director at Humans of Sport, a group that has focused on the issue, was critical of the new Olympic policy. “This kind of brutal language doesn’t protect sports — it polices women’s bodies,” she said in a statement to The New York Times. “It fuels suspicion, invites public scrutiny and puts already vulnerable athletes at risk.”
The IOC conducted a scientific review last November which concluded that trans athletes retain advantages from having been born male regardless of how they identify. From that point on, today’s decision seemed like a forgone conclusion.
The committee’s medical and scientific director, Dr Jane Thornton, last week presented to IOC members at a meeting in Lausanne the initial findings of a science-based review into the issues of transgender athletes and athletes with differences of sexual development (DSD) competing in female sport.
Sources said the presentation by Thornton, a Canadian former Olympic rower, stated that scientific evidence showed there were physical advantages to being born male that remained with athletes, including those who had taken treatment to reduce testosterone levels.
“It was a very scientific, factual and unemotional presentation which quite clearly laid out the evidence,” one source said. Another IOC insider said there had been hugely positive feedback from IOC members about the presentation.
All of this is fallout from the IOC’s indefensible position during the last Olympics which allowed Algerian boxer Imane Khelif to compete against women.
Track and field became the first major sport to introduce mandatory DNA sex testing for athletes, starting with women’s competitions in March 2024. That came less than a year after the issue of eligibility erupted at the Paris Olympics in 2024, when the boxing competition was upended by ugly scenes inside and outside the ring over the participation of two women who went on to secure gold medals.
Here’s the ugly scene which the NY Times reported on in August 2024:
An Italian boxer abandoned her bout at the Paris Olympics after only 46 seconds on Thursday, refusing to continue after taking a heavy punch from an Algerian opponent who had been disqualified from last year’s world championships over questions about her eligibility to compete in women’s sports.
The Italian boxer, Angela Carini, withdrew after her Algerian opponent, Imane Khelif, landed a powerful blow that struck Carini square in the face. Carini paused for a moment, then turned her back to Khelif and walked to her corner. Her coaches quickly signaled that she would not continue, and the referee stopped the fight…
Carini declined to shake Khelif’s hand after her defeat was announced, then fell to her knees in the ring and began to cry.
“I am heartbroken,” she told reporters afterward. “I went to the ring to honor my father. I was told a lot of times that I was a warrior but I preferred to stop for my health. I have never felt a punch like this.”
This is the face of a woman forced into fighting a male by #olympicgames rules that harm women. Shame on the International Olympic Federation @iocmedia The darkest day for women’s sport. IOC sanctioned male violence against women. Angela Carini has been cheated out of her Olympic… pic.twitter.com/VcQV8XN8Qz
— Women’s Rights Network – WRN (@WomensRightsNet) August 1, 2024
Despite the obvious mismatch, the IOC made a public campaign of defending Khelif’s right to compete as a woman saying, “Every person has the right to practice sport without discrimination.”
Every person had the right except actual women it turned out. They would be discriminated against in favor of men like Imane Khelif. And, at the time, Thomas Bach, the idiot head of the IOC, claimed that there was no scientific definition of a woman that could settle the problem. He then went on to attack the “hate speech” of those who claimed Khelif was not a woman despite her passport saying she was one. This really is peak gender insanity.
Thomas Bach, IOC President, on the boxers, in the last few minutes.
Professional analysis: this is unlikely to calm the situation. pic.twitter.com/g4JHNx5eqP
— SEEN in Journalism (@JournalismSEEN) August 3, 2024
It was a shameful display. Fortunately Bach resigned from his position last summer.
Finally, here’s Alejandra Caraballo’s reaction [thanks to David for sending me this]. Apparently, maintaining the sex division in sports is eugenics now.
Harvard Law School clinical instructor and trans activist Alejandra Caraballo denounces the IOC bar on biological males competing in the women’s category as a “eugenicist project of sex purity.” She anticipates “suicides and ruined lives.” https://t.co/oVgERZGyjZ pic.twitter.com/G4Pv93UWok
— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) March 26, 2026
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