In a landmark decision the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has announced that Olympic women’s sport will be limited to biological females.
It follows nearly 20 years of debate since the rise of athletes with DSD (differences in sexual development) winning World and Olympic medals. There will now be a one-off sex test, which will prevent any athletes with a Y chromosome, including transgender women and DSD athletes, except in extremely rare cases where they do not benefit from the performance-enhancing effects of testosterone, from competing in women’s categories. This slightly wordy description shows us some of the complexities in this case that we sometimes miss.
The IOC President, Kirsty Coventry said this was the result of a review “led by medical experts”. Scientific research conducted over decades overwhelmingly finds, at a population level, that those who have gone through male puberty enjoy at least a 10 per cent advantage over those who have not.
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