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The IOC set a goal Wednesday of early 2026 to detail a new admissions policy for women's sports that could exclude transgender athletes from the Olympics.
International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry also emphasized the Olympic body's statutory belief that access to sport is a human right for all people on a simple and recreational level.
The two-time Olympic swimming champion set up a working group to look into the “protection of the women's category” after taking office in June.
Coventry won the IOC presidential election, in which a majority of the seven candidates pledged to tighten gender policies. Previously, the IOC only offered recommendations to the governing bodies of individual sports, which were left to decide on their own rules.
“I really hope that in the next couple of months and certainly in the first quarter of next year we will have a very clear decision and path forward,” Coventry said at a news conference after a meeting of the executive board she chairs.
The timetable could lead to IOC policy being approved – likely on transgender athletes and athletes with differences in sexual development (DSD) – at a meeting ahead of the Cortina Winter Games in Milan, which open on February 6.
The 2028 Summer Games will be held in Los Angeles, and US President Donald Trump in February signed a “Keep Men Out of Women's Sports” executive order that could cut off funding to organizations that allow transgender athletes to compete in women's and women's sports.
The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee effectively banned transgender women from competing in July, telling its national Olympic sports federations that they were “required to comply” with the government order.
The world governing bodies for the top-level Olympic sports of athletics and swimming have already banned athletes who have experienced male puberty from competing in women's competitions ahead of the Paris Olympics.
In Paris 16 months ago, there was a furor over women's boxing and the eligibility of two gold medalists, Algeria's Imane Khelif and Taiwan's Lin Yu-ting.
World Boxing, the new Olympic governing body, has introduced the SRY gene test, which identifies the Y chromosome found in men. World Athletics and the International Ski and Snowboard Federation have also introduced tests.
“Protection of the female category”
Coventry said Wednesday that trying to find consensus “may not be the easiest task.”
“But we will do everything we can to ensure that when we talk about the women's category, we protect the women's category and we do it in the fairest way possible,” she said.
It is unclear how many, if any, transgender athletes compete at the Olympic level.
However, the Olympic Charter, which codifies the rules of the IOC and the Olympic Games, states: “The exercise of sport is a human right…without any discrimination with respect to internationally recognized human rights.”
“This position will never change,” Coventry said Wednesday. “Sport at the grassroots level and in any form of recreation is available to everyone and you should have access to participation for everyone.”
