Transgender women to be banned from all female Olympic events

Sources said the presentation by Thornton, a Canadian former Olympic rower, stated that scientific evidence showed there were physical advantages to being born male that remained with athletes, including those who had taken treatment to reduce testosterone levels.

“It was a very scientific, factual and unemotional presentation which quite clearly laid out the evidence,” one source said. Another IOC insider said there had been hugely positive feedback from IOC members about the presentation.

It is understood the IOC is likely to announce its new policy early in the new year, possibly around the IOC session at the Milan-Cortina winter Olympics in early February.

Some work remains to be done to ensure the new policy is legally watertight. Until now the IOC’s policy has been based on recommendations and guidance to sports rather than actually being part of its eligibility rules.

Some sports such as athletics and swimming have already brought in a ban on athletes who have been through male puberty taking part in female competition but others, including football, have not.

Coventry, a former Olympic swimmer from Zimbabwe who was elected earlier this year, said in June: “We understand there will be differences depending on the sports. We should make the effort to place emphasis on the protection of the female category and we should ensure that this is done in consensus with all the stakeholders. But we need to do that with a scientific approach and the inclusion of the international federations who have already done a lot of work in this area.”

The new policy is also likely to cover DSD (differences of sex development) athletes — those who were raised as girls from birth but have male chromosomes and male levels of testosterone.

That follows the huge controversy at the boxing tournament at the Paris 2024 Olympics when two boxers, Imane Khelif from Algeria and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting, won gold medals despite having been disqualified from the previous year’s World Championships for allegedly failing to meet gender eligibility criteria.

World Boxing, the new international boxing federation which has been recognised by the IOC since Paris, has now introduced mandatory sex testing and has said Khelif will not be able to compete in the female category until she undergoes the test.

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