(Photo credit score: Reuters/Yves Herman/Pool)
MILAN — Global sports activities leaders have reached consensus on a brand new set of eligibility standards for transgender athletes, with the brand new coverage anticipated to be introduced throughout the first half of this 12 months, the International Olympic Committee stated Saturday.
It can be the primary uniform coverage adopted by the IOC and worldwide sports activities federations, making use of to main occasions in dozens of sports activities, together with the Games and world championships. Currently, federations have their very own guidelines which might fluctuate.
Details of the brand new coverage are unclear however it’s anticipated to severely limit the participation of transgender athletes who compete in ladies’s classes if they’ve undergone full male puberty earlier than any subsequent medical transition.
The IOC, below its first feminine president, Kirsty Coventry, took the lead in June, choosing a uniform method.
‘Protecting the feminine class is likely one of the key reforms she needs to usher in,’ IOC spokesman Mark Adams informed a news convention on the Milan-Cortina Winter Games on Saturday.
‘I’d say it’ll occur shortly, throughout the subsequent few months.’
‘It has been out to session part and we had the ‘pause and mirror’ (interval) on it,’ Adams stated. ‘Generally talking there’s consensus throughout the sporting motion. I believe you’ll have a brand new coverage within the first half of this 12 months. Don’t maintain me to it, however that’s roughly the timescale.’
In September, Coventry arrange the ‘Protection of the Female Category’ working group, made up of specialists in addition to representatives of worldwide federations, to look into how finest to guard the feminine class in sports activities.
Before Coventry’s choice, the IOC had balked at any common rule on transgender participation for the Games, instructing worldwide federations in 2021 to provide you with their very own tips. Under present guidelines, nonetheless in power, transgender athletes are eligible to participate within the Olympics as soon as cleared by their respective federations.
Only a handful of brazenly transgender athletes have taken half within the Games. New Zealand’s Laurel Hubbard turned the primary brazenly transgender athlete to compete in a special gender class to that assigned at start when the weightlifter took half within the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
Currently, for instance, World Aquatics permits transgender athletes who’ve transitioned earlier than the age of 12, to compete. World Rugby bans all transgender athletes from elite-level competitions.
President Donald Trump has banned transgender athletes from competing at school, faculty and professional occasions within the feminine class within the United States, as Los Angeles prepares to host the 2028 Summer Olympics.
Trump, who signed the ‘Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports’ order in February, has stated he wouldn’t permit transgender athletes to compete on the LA Games.
–Reuters, particular to Field Level Media