‘ENSURE FAIRNESS’: Olympics chief announces ‘scientific approach’ to ‘protect female category’

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The new president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) addressed the subject of transgender athletes competing in women’s sports, and revealed there is “overwhelming support” by IOC members to “protect the female category.”

Kirsty Coventry, who was in Lausanne, Switzerland, chairing her first meetings this week since becoming chief, said that a taskforce of scientists and international federations would be created in the coming weeks to come up with a new policy.

“We understand that there’ll be differences depending on the sport,” she said, according to Fox News.

“But it was fully agreed that as members that, as the IOC, we should make the effort to place emphasis on the protection of the female category.”

Coventry continued: “It was very clear from the members that we have to protect the female category, first and foremost. We have to do that to ensure fairness. And we have to do it with a scientific approach. And with the inclusion of the international federations who have done a lot of work in that area.”

The new policy is expected to ban trans athletes from competing in the female category.

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But Coventry, who won seven Olympic medal when she competed for Zimbabwe, noted that the shift in policy would not affect previous Olympics results.

“We are not going to be doing anything retrospectively. We are going to be looking forward,” Coventry said.

The update comes after the controversial boxing tournament at the 2024 Paris Games after two athletes — Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting — won gold medals despite having been disqualified from the previous year’s World Championships for allegedly failing to meet gender eligibility criteria.

World Boxing, which is now recognized by the IOC as the sport’s international federation, has since introduced mandatory sex testing and said Khelif would not be able to compete in the female category until she undergoes the test.

Khelif has always maintained she was born a woman, competes as a woman, and is a woman.

“It was very clear from the membership the discussion around this has to be done with medical and scientific research at the core, so we are looking at the facts and the nuances and the inclusion of the international federations that have done so much of this work,” Coventry said.

“But it was pretty much unanimously felt that the IOC should take a leading role in bringing everyone together to try and find a broad consensus.”