More to IOC gender testing than appeasing Trump: ex-IOC executive
Kirsty Coventry is the first woman to lead the Olympic movement (Yves Herman) The International Olympic Committee's new policy on gender testing could be seen as "smart positioning" given the current US political climate but a former IOC marketing executive has told AFP he did not believe it was the "driving factor". The IOC on Thursday announced the re-introduction of gender testing to determine eligibility to compete in women's events, an issue which caused a furore in the boxing at the 2024 Paris Olympics. They say only "biological females" can compete in women's events.
The decision was welcomed by US President Donald Trump, who last year issued an executive order banning transgender athletes from women's sport. The next Summer Games are in Los Angeles in 2028. "With the current US political climate, a cynic might say that removing this pressure point before 2028 was smart positioning," said former IOC executive Terrence Burns.
"But I don't think that was the driving factor. " The IOC decision comes just over a year after Kirsty Coventry became the first woman to be elected IOC president, succeeding Thomas Bach. Whereas Bach brought in a policy in 2021 that left individual federations to decide their own regulations, the IOC is now introducing a blanket policy across all Olympic sports.
Coventry had made resolving the thorny issue a priority after the 2024 Paris Games were rocked by a gender row involving women boxers Imane Khelif if Algeria and Taiwan's Lin Yu-ting. Khelif and Lin were excluded from the International Boxing Association's 2023 world championships after the IBA said they had failed eligibility tests. However, the IOC allowed them both to compete at the Paris Games, saying they had been victims of "a sudden and arbitrary decision by the IBA".
Both boxers went on to win gold medals. While Burns said the IOC had "drawn a line under" the issue with the new policy, his fellow former IOC marketing executive Michael Payne told AFP that Coventry had "moved actively and decisively". "There was mounting pressure to protect the principle of female sports competition," he said.