The IOC’s shift in position on trans women in elite sports is seismic, but new president Kirsty Coventry is reflecting a changed political climateBy any measure, it amounts to one of the most astonishing U-turns from a governing body in modern times. Four and a half years ago, the International Olympic Committee was lauding the appearance of the first transgender weightlifter, Laurel Hubbard, at an Olympics, and issuing a framework to sports saying that transgender women “should not be deemed to have an unfair or disproportionate competitive advantage” over biological women.Now it has not only ripped up every last morsel of that guidance but also performed a spectacular 180-degree turn.Over 10 tightly worded pages, the IOC now states that the female category must be protected for fairness and safety reasons, and makes it clear that SRY screening – a sex test using saliva or a cheek-swab – will be used to determine biological sex.It is a monumental shift that means transgender women and athletes with differences in sex development (DSD), who were reported as female at birth but have internal testes and have undergone male puberty, are now banned from the female category at all future Olympics.In conversations with multiple sources in IOC and sporting circles, the same names come up: Kirsty Coventry, Imane Khelif and even Donald Trump. But, perhaps surprisingly, there is also broad agreement that the IOC was pushing at an open door – in private, most sports had been urging it to introduce such a policy for some time.Was there one moment where the mood began to shift? For most sources it came amid the furore surrounding the Olympic women’s boxing tournament in Paris, and the questions over whether Khelif had a DSD, and thus an unfair advantage.https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/mar/26/why-olympics-u-turned-gender-rules-sex-testing
>For most sources it came amid the furore surrounding the Olympic women’s boxing tournament in Paris, and the questions over whether Khelif had a DSD, and thus an unfair advantage.A claim with literally no fucking evidence multiple people are getting sued for.By the way, I love that after all the fucking bitching about hospitals using the term "birthing person" instead of woman, the right is now trying to call people with androgen insensitivity men even though THEY CAN GIVE BIRTH.I'm beginning to think the right literally just hates women and minorities.
The Grauniad wrote something other than troon propaganda.>Then there was the science. It is hardly news that males are stronger, faster and have better endurance than females. As the IOC policy document makes clear, that advantage is 10-12% in most running and swimming events, and greater than 100% in events that involve explosive power, including collision, lifting and punching sports.>The big difference in recent years is there have been more studies that show that when even men reduce their testosterone levels, that male advantage is largely still retained. In the others, [troons] and [hermaphrodites] retain an advantage over ... women even after hormone treatment, because they have undergone male puberty.>That, the IOC decided, meant that they needed to be banned in order to ensure fairness and safety in the female category.
