Overview
- Caster Semenya criticized the IOC on Sunday in Cape Town, calling its reinstated gender checks for Los Angeles 2028 “a disrespect for women” and “harmful.”
- The IOC, which announced the policy Thursday, will require a one-time SRY gene test to define eligibility for the women’s category at Olympic and other IOC events.
- IOC president Kirsty Coventry defended the shift as science-led and said it protects fairness and safety in women’s sport.
- The policy limits women’s events to what the IOC terms biological females, effectively barring transgender women and many intersex or DSD athletes, with testing via saliva, cheek swab, or blood, and it is not retroactive or applied to grassroots sport.
- Reporting notes the change could ease friction with President Donald Trump, who ordered a U.S. ban on transgender women in women’s sport, and it revives a practice the IOC dropped in 1999 after earlier criticism and more recent disputes in Olympic boxing.