IOC walks back on trans athlete rules,but gaps remain

“What we're saying now is you don't need to use testosterone at all, International Olympic Committee (IOC) medical director Richard Budgett said, signaling a major shift in the way the sporting body looks at gender, and whether or not certain athletes are allowed to take the field.

- Avishek Roy

NEW DELHI:

IOC released new guidelines on Tuesday related to the participation of transgender and intersex athletes, dropping its earlier stance of using the levels of natural testosterone in a sportsperson as the determining factor for their eligibility. Instead, IOC called for evidence of a performance advantage on a case-by-case basis if an athlete's eligibility is questioned.

The guiding principle of the new framework is inclusion, prevention of harm, non-discrimination, fairness, no presumption of advantage and evidence-based approach”. No athlete should be excluded from competing based on an “unverified, alleged or perceived unfair competitive advantage due to their sex variations, physical appearance and/or transgender status, IOC stressed.

The policy will override the IOC Consensus Meeting on Sex Reassignment and Hyperandrogenism” that came out in November 2015, and set the athlete's total testosterone level must remain below 10nmo/L throughout the period of desired eligibility to compete in the female category.

It also said, “Compliance with these conditions may be monitored by testing and in the event of non-compliance, the athlete's eligibility for the female competition will be suspended for 12 months. The six-page document follows years of consultation with medical and human rights experts and, since 2019, athletes directly affected to help draft guidelines promoting fairness and inclusion.

IOC acknowledged that the testosterone rule resulted in athletes being subjected to “medically unnecessary procedures and severe harm.

At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard became the first openly, transgender athlete, to compete at the Olympics while defending women's 800-meter champion Caster Semenya of South Africa was among track athletes with intersex conditions and naturally high testosterone levels excluded from their events.