Transgender female athletes are now barred from the Olympics after the IOC agreed on Thursday to a new eligibility policy that aligns with US President Donald Trump’s executive order on women’s sports ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
“Eligibility for any women’s category event at the Olympic Games or any other IOC event, including individual and team sports, is now limited to biological women,” the International Olympic Committee said, “as determined by a one-time screening for the SRY gene.”
It is unclear how many, if any, transgender women compete at the Olympic level. No woman born male participated in the 2024 Paris Summer Games. The eligibility policy, which will be in place from the LA Olympics in July 2028, “protects fairness, safety and integrity in the women’s category,” the IOC said.
“It is not retroactive and does not apply to any local or recreational sports programs,” said the IOC, whose Olympic Charter states that access to sport is a human right.
After the executive board meeting, the International Olympic Committee released a 10-page policy document that also restricts female athletes, such as two-time Olympic champion Caster Semenya, with health problems known as gender differences in development, or DSD.
The IOC and its president Kirsty Coventry wanted a clear policy rather than continuing to advise the sport’s governing bodies, which previously drafted their own rules. Coventry set out a review of the “protection of the women’s category” as one of its first major decisions last June, becoming the first woman to lead an Olympic body in its 132-year history.
Women’s eligibility was a strong issue in last year’s seven-candidate IOC election, with arch-rivals Coventry promising a stronger policy lead on the issue. Ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics, three top sports – athletics, swimming and cycling – have passed rules excluding transgender women who have gone through male puberty.
The IOC paper details its research that being born male confers physical advantages that are maintained.
“Men experience three significant testosterone peaks: in utero, during childhood’s mini-puberty, and beginning with puberty in puberty through adulthood,” the paper states.
He added that this gives men “performance advantages based on individual gender in sports and events that rely on strength, power and/or endurance”.
– The end
Published on:
26 March 2026 19:29 IST
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