IOC president Kirsty Coventry told reporters at a press conference in Tokyo on Saturday that she hopes to build consensus across sports on safeguarding the female category, stressing that fairness in competition must remain the top priority.
Coventry confirmed that the recently established Protection of the Female Category Working Group had already held its first meeting, and she was awaiting a debrief. The panel’s role will be to guide the Olympic Movement through the complex and often contentious development of gender eligibility policies.
She added that she would like the IOC “to take a little bit more of a leading role” in shaping decisions on whether transgender athletes should be permitted to compete in the women’s category, noting that the responsibility currently rests with individual federations. While Coventry hopes for unity, the former Olympic champion acknowledged that a universal solution is unlikely.
“It’s different for each sport,” she explained. “In some, like equestrian, men and women already compete together, so it may not be as pressing an issue. But in many others, it has been a major point of debate for a long time.”
The IOC’s 2021 guidelines on ‘Fairness, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination’ suggested that federations prioritised the inclusion of gender non-conforming athletes in the category of their choice, while making no presumptions of unfair advantage. However, the current standards have come into question after last year’s Olympic fiasco, which put the IOC and the International Boxing Association at odds with each other over several boxers that failed the IBA’s gender tests during its preceeding World Championhips in New Dehli and were still allowed to compete in the Paris Olympics.
The much-publicised debate on Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting’s qualifications exposed a wider issue within the Olympic Movement, and the IOC was criticised by many for its failure to lead on the hot topic. The growing unease within the sporting community became a major talking point for the IOC’s then presidential candidates during their campaign leading to elections last March, with several, including the now-elected Coventry and her fellow running mate, World Athletics President Sebastian Coe, contemplating a blanket ban on transgender athletes.
Coe’s federation has since introduced mandatory tests for athletes in the female class to detect the SRY gene, going into effect for the current World Athletics Championships, this week in Japan.
