The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has now made it clear that men who identify as women are not eligible to compete in its women’s sporting events, which aligns the Olympics with President Donald Trump’s Executive Order on sports ahead of the 2028 games in Los Angeles.
“Eligibility for any female category event at the Olympic Games or any other IOC event, including individual and team sports, is now limited to biological females,” the IOC said in a statement this week, according to the Associated Press.
The IOC said that the new policy will be in force for the 2028 games and added that the move “protects fairness, safety and integrity in the female category.”
However, the rule is not retroactive, won’t affect any records or athletes, and does not apply to grassroots or recreational sports.
The IOC had previously relied on the various organizations that govern individual sports to craft their own rules, but that left an uneven patchwork of competing ideas as some sports allowed transgender athletes under varying qualification rules while others outright banned them.
The IOC ultimately decided that it needed a single rule to address trans athletes.
“At the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat,” said IOC president Kirsty Coventry. “So, it is absolutely clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category.”
The IOC also presented its scientific and medical research upon which it based the ban. The research shows that being born male gives athletes a distinct physical advantage over athletes born female.
“Males experience three significant testosterone peaks: In utero, in mini-puberty of infancy, and beginning in adolescent puberty through adulthood,” the IOC research says, adding that the physical differences give males “individual sex-based performance advantages in sports and events that rely on strength, power, and/or endurance.”
To date, no trans athlete has qualified for the 2028 Olympics.
The new policy comes more than a year after President Trump signed his “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” Executive Order mandating that sports in the U.S. that are funded by federal dollars exclude transgender athletes from competing in women’s and girls’ sports.
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