The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has confirmed it will bar transgender women and most athletes with differences in sex development (DSD) from competing in the women’s category at future Olympic Games, starting with Los Angeles 2028. From then on, only athletes classified as “biologically female” via a one‑off gene test will be eligible for women’s events at IOC competitions.
Anyone who wants to compete in a women’s event will have to undergo screening for the SRY gene, which sits on the Y chromosome and is linked to male sex development. The IOC says this saliva, cheek swab or blood test is “unintrusive compared to other possible methods” and argues that the presence of the SRY gene is “highly accurate evidence that an athlete has experienced male sex development”. It is a once‑in‑a‑career test, but for transgender women and many DSD athletes, it effectively closes the door on the women’s category altogether.
IOC president Kirsty Coventry has framed the policy as being about protecting fairness and safety in elite women’s sport. “At the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat,” she said, adding that “it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category” and that in some sports “it would simply not be safe”. The IOC has also released a document pointing to what it describes as male performance advantages across many events, especially in speed, strength and power‑based disciplines.
But the science around advantage is more complex than that summary suggests, and plenty of experts and advocates worry that trans women are being excluded on the basis of evidence that is still evolving.
A recent systematic review and meta‑analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine pooled data from 52 studies and 6,485 participants, and found that while transgender women tended to have higher lean mass than cisgender women one to three years after hormone therapy, their overall physical fitness was comparable.
The authors concluded that the current, mostly low‑certainty evidence “does not support theories of inherent athletic advantages for transgender women over cisgender” women, and warned the data do not justify blanket bans like this one.
There are also serious human rights concerns. Organisations in the sport and LGBTQIA+ space have warned that mandatory sex testing will not just affect transgender and DSD athletes, but could lead to increased policing of any woman whose body, performance or appearance is seen as “suspicious”.
Kimberly Frost, World co‑secretary‑general of ILGA, said sport should be where “excellence, respect and inclusion meet”, and questioned how creating more scrutiny on women’s bodies in the name of protection will impact those who “would have just wanted to play the game” they love.
Only a handful of openly transgender athletes have ever made it to the Games, including New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, who competed at Tokyo 2020 in the women’s super‑heavyweight class and finished outside the medals. DSD athletes like Caster Semenya and Imane Khelif have spent years competing, winning and being publicly debated, often without having any say in how their bodies are discussed.
For many in and around women’s sport, the IOC’s new policy feels less like a neutral tweak to the rulebook and more like a message to trans women and some intersex women that there is no place for them on the world’s biggest stage.
The IOC stresses the policy applies only to elite competition and not grassroots or recreational sport, but it is encouraging international federations to follow its lead, meaning these rules are likely to shape women’s elite sport well beyond the Olympics.
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