Transgender women athletes banned from Olympics by new IOC policy on female eligibility

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — Transgender women athletes are now excluded from the Olympics after the IOC agreed to a new eligibility policy on Thursday, which aligns with U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order on women’s sports ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

“Eligibility for any female category event at the Olympic Games or any other IOC event, including individual and team sports, is now limited to biological females,” the International Olympic Committee said, “determined on the basis of a one-time SRY gene screening.”

It is unclear how many, if any, transgender women are competing at an Olympic level. No woman who transitioned from being born male competed at the 2024 Paris Summer Games.

The eligibility policy that will apply from the LA Olympics in July 2028 “protects fairness, safety and integrity in the female category,” the IOC said.

“It is not retroactive and does not apply to any grassroots or recreational sports programs,” said the IOC, whose Olympic Charter states that access to play sport is a human right.

After an executive board meeting, the International Olympic Committee published a 10-page policy document that also restricts female athletes, such as two-time Olympic champion runner Caster Semenya with medical conditions known as differences in sex development, or DSD.

The IOC and its president, Kirsty Coventry, have wanted a clear policy instead of continuing to advise sports’ governing bodies who previously have drafted their own rules.

Coventry set up a review of “protecting the female category” as one of her first big decisions last June as the first woman to lead the Olympic body in its 132-year history.

Female eligibility was a strong theme in a seven-candidate IOC election last year when Coventry’s main rivals pledged a stronger policy to lead on the issue.

Before the 2024 Paris Olympics, three top-tier sports – track and field, swimming and cycling – already passed rules excluding transgender women who had been through male puberty.

The IOC document details its research that being born male gives physical advantages that are retained.

“Males experience three significant testosterone peaks: in utero, in mini-puberty of infancy and beginning in adolescent puberty through adulthood,” the document said.

It added this gives males “individual sex-based performance advantages in sports and events that rely on strength, power and/or endurance.”