IOC says only ‘biological females’ can compete in women’s events at the Olympics

The International Olympic Committee announced a new policy Thursday that bars transgender women from competing at the Olympics.

“It’s been done with the best interests of athletes right at the heart. We know that this topic is sensitive,” IOC President Kirsty Coventry told reporters during a virtual news conference from the organization’s Swiss headquarters.

Coventry, an Olympic champion swimmer from Zimbabwe, has focused on finding a way to ”protect the female category” since being elected last year as the first African and first woman to lead the IOC.

“At the Olympic Games, you know the smallest little bit of an advantage can be what makes you a gold medalist or not. To me, that comes back down to protecting the field of play and to having that field of play being safe and equal for all,” she said. “I feel that’s what this policy does.”

Eligibility to compete as a woman in the Olympics will be “determined on the basis of a one‑time SRY gene screening” under the policy, according to the IOC, a gene described as “a segment of DNA that is almost always on the Y chromosome” and initiates male sex development.

Done by a cheek swab or blood test, the screening is already required by World Athletics, the international federation over track and field. The IOC labeled it the “most accurate and least intrusive way currently available to screen for biological sex.”

Although how the new policy will be implemented is still being worked out, it will be in place for the next Olympics, the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Utah’s Organizing Committee for the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games acknowledged the change.

“We recognize that this has been an important topic across sport for some time,” Fraser Bullock, the committee’s president and executive chair, said in a statement. “We respect the IOC under President Kirsty Coventry for its work and for providing a pathway for the future.”

Did Trump influence the IOC’s new policy on transgender athletes?

The new eligibility policy aligns with U.S. President Donald Trump’s "Keeping Men Out Of Women’s Sports” executive order signed in February 2025 that was intended to prevent transgender athletes from competing in all sporting events, including the Olympics.

The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee adopted a ban last July.

Trump’s order had raised questions about the ability of transgender athletes to compete in an Olympics in the United States, because of a pledge to take lawful action to prevent “males seeking to participate in women’s sports” from entering the country.

His order also calls on the American secretary of state to “use all appropriate and available measures to see that the International Olympic Committee amends the standards governing Olympic sporting events.”

The U.S. president himself has said at the L.A. Games, “there will be a very, very strong form of testing, and if the test doesn’t come out appropriately, they won’t be in the Olympics,” but stopped short of saying his administration would prosecute transgender athletes.

Coventry was asked at the news conference about Trump’s influence on the new policy, based on the findings of a working group that she formed last June after hearing from IOC members that they wanted to see something done on the issue.

“This was a priority for me way before President Trump came into his second term. There’s not been any pressure from us to deliver anything from anybody outside of the Olympic movement,” she said.

Later, Coventry also said she’d made a promise to deal with the issue during her campaign for the IOC presidency and “wanted to make sure I’m fulfilling what I’m telling people and that I’m not just a mouthpiece.”

How the IOC’s new policy on ‘female eligibility’ was developed

Previously, decisions about transgender athlete participation were left up to the international federations over individual sports under the IOC’s "Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sex Variations" adopted in 2021.

The Associated Press reported it’s “unclear how many, if any, transgender women are competing at an Olympic level.” At the 2024 Summer Games in Paris, the gender of two female boxers was questioned by some, but the IOC president at the time said they were born as women.

The new policy on transgender athlete participation, adopted by the organization’s Executive Board and shared in a conference call with IOC members, is not retroactive and does not apply to any grassroots or recreational sports programs.

Dr. Jane Thornton, the IOC’s health, medicine and science department director, told reporters there were “extensive” consultations with experts “to ensure that this policy development was informed by scientific, medical, legal, ethical, human rights and athletes perspectives.”

Also considered, Thornton said, were “operational realities across the Olympic movement.”

More than 1,100 athletes responded to a survey on the topic, she said, and “impacted athletes from all over the world” were interviewed. Chief medical officers and others from the international federations provided information about their practical experience.

“We needed a scientific but also an empathetic approach,” Thornton said, calling for sports officials “to ensure that athletes human dignity, physical and psychological well-being, health and safety, and right to privacy and confidentiality, are respected.”