Olympics ban on trans women will reshape sports worldwide
The International Olympic Committee has created a new policy that will have worldwide effects on trans athletes across sports. The post Olympics ban on trans women will reshape sports worldwide appeared first on Outsports.
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Olympics President Kirsty Coventry has consistently said that building a new policy regarding transgender women in sports, and women athletes with differences in sexual development, is one of her top priorities since taking office last year.
On Thursday, the IOC revealed that new policy that revolves around genetic sex testing.
For their part, it’s something more than 80 human rights and sports advocacy organizations oppose. These groups have raised concerns about human rights, privacy issues, and questions about the efficacy of testing and the objections of Dr. Andrew Sinclair, the professor who first found the SRY gene.
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IOC bans trans women from women’s sports with new mandatory testing
The IOC has announced testing that will effectively bar trans women and some cis women from all women’s competition.
“Biological sex is much more complex, with chromosomal, gonadal, hormonal and secondary sex characteristics all playing a role,” Sinclair wrote in August 2025. “Using SRY to establish biological sex is wrong because all it tells you is whether or not the gene is present. It does not tell you how SRY is functioning, whether a testis has formed, whether testosterone is produced and, if so, whether it can be used by the body.”
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The new IOC policy does give a very rare exception for some women with DSD “who do not benefit from the anabolic and/or performance-enhancing effects of testosterone” — essentially, the rare woman whose body does not process testosterone.
The IOC abandoned sex testing in 1999 because of these issues and other flaws. It’s made a return in part because of the outcry over athletes such as retired South African Olympic Champion Caster Semenya (who is not transgender), and debate over transgender women in sport elevated since collegiate swimmer Lia Thomas’ NCAA championship in 2022.
Elite sport kicked the banning of trans women from women’s sports into high gear, beginning with World Aquatics within months of Thomas’ win.
World Athletics followed suit in 2023, and with a total ban on trans women and stringent restrictions of DSD women athletes. Last year the world governing body for track and field instituted sex testing for every qualifying female athlete at last year’s World Athletic Championships.
IOC policy will lead to bans of trans women across every sport
World sports governing bodies in boxing, triathlon, rugby and sailing have also already instituted similar restrictions. Other governing bodies have played a wait-and-see game, but now with the IOC’s new regulations, every Olympic sport is likely to join the line.
Coventry has consistently campaigned for policy change to “protect the female category and female athletes.” Some voices, such as 2008 Australian track and field Olympian and sociologist Madeleine Pape, see this move in more stark perspective. Pape recently observed that Coventry wants to get the IOC back to “delivering Olympic Games.”
Then: “All this other stuff, human rights, sustainability, is kind of getting in the way,” Pape said on the End of Sport Podcast last week.
“She doesn’t want to have an event like a recurrence of what happened during the Paris Olympic Games where two boxers were subjected to unprecedented scrutiny. The IOC was really put under the spotlight, and Kirsty Coventry doesn’t want to have to deal with this.”
Banning trans girls may now seep further into youth sports
This policy directly affects elite athletes, but there is a mounting call for similar policy where future Olympians get their start.
The NCAA was the first governing body in the U.S. to concede to the President’s executive order to ban transgender women for women’s collegiate sport. With the IOC moving ahead, NCAA President Charlie Baker will receive more pressure to add a testing regime to the trans ban already put in place.
Transgender inclusion in interscholastic sports again is an issue with U.S. midterm federal elections coming in November. Three states — Maine, Washington and Colorado — are set to have voters decide on banning trans student-athletes, with another three states potentially joining the line.
In all of these states, the efforts are being backed by high-profile anti-LGBTQ organizations and in Maine and Washington being financed by billionaire GOP donors. Washington’s ban directly calls for IOC/elite sex testing and genital exams on high school athletes.
If nothing else, Kirsty Coventry has handed anti-trans brigades a gift. The possible campaign ads could read: “The IOC agrees with us!”
The fact that the IOC has made that move now, when such issues are in the public eye, also leads to the possibility that such policies could even seep into youth sport. Such would be a departure from the IOC’s Principle 4 in the Principles of Olympism. The concept that “the practice of sport is a human right”.
Kirsty Coventry’s got the policy she said she wanted. It’s ushered in a new era in sport, but it looks to be a dark era ahead.
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The post Olympics ban on trans women will reshape sports worldwide appeared first on Outsports.
