Transgender women are increasingly likely to be prohibited from the female category through Olympic sport after another leading candidate to become president of the International Olympic Committee has supported a new general policy.
Individual sports were able to establish their own rules in the Paris matches of last year, which caused a patchwork of policies that prevented anyone who had crossed male puberty in competition in sports such as athletics and swimming , but potentially eligible in women’s football.
There are also Olympic Sport by Sport rules concerning athletes with differences in sexual development, with athletics, led by Lord Coe, judging that athletes must reduce their level of testosterone to less than 2.5 nanomols per liter. This meant that Caster Semenya, who won the 800 -meter Olympic title in 2012 and 2016, is not eligible.
COE, who is president of world athletics and leading candidate to succeed Thomas Bach as president of the IOC, has long shown that he would bring clarity similar to gender policy in all Olympic sports.
Kirsty Coventry, a member of the board of directors of the IOC since 2018, is also a member of the CIO board of directors, which now supports an Olympic policy similar to athletics or swimming.
“The protection of the female category and female sports is essential – this is a priority that we collectively meet,” said Coventry, who won seven Olympic medals, including two gold, in swimming.
“There is more and more scientific research. We have no conversation on the way it harmed men’s sport. This, in itself, says that we have to protect female sport. It is very clear that transgender women are more capable in the women’s category and can eliminate opportunities that should be equal for women. »»
Coventry was also part of the board of directors which managed the enormous Olympic controversy in Paris when Lin Yu-Ting and Imane Khelif won gold after being deemed ineligible for the female category by the International Boxing Association; A body that was then stripped of the right to manage sport due to governance and ethical problems. Coventry said that “the lessons will always be learned – Paris is certainly one of these moments”, but said they could not have predicted specific controversy.
“I do not believe that it is something with hindsight that we could have predicted, because these boxers had fights against each other and that there had been no previous problems,” she declared.
“When you have such a sensitive problem on the world scene, you must make sure that athletes are protected – that their rights are heard – and that they are protected on both sides.”
The IOC, which stopped gender tests at the turn of the century, had defended the participation of Khelif and Yu-Ting in Paris by pointing their passports and saying that they were born and grew up as women.
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