The Olympics discovers there are athletic advantages to being male

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A ban on transgender women competitors is strongly expected to be in place for the 2028 Olympics – but it remains unclear if there will be barriers against athletes with differences of sexual development (DSD) after the boxing furore at Paris 2024.

Under the existing rules, each sport is empowered to decide if transgender women can compete if their testosterone levels fall below a designated threshold.

But the International Olympic Committee, under new president Kirsty Coventry, is in discussions about a dramatic policy shift that would impose a blanket ban across all sports for the Los Angeles Games.

Such a move would prevent the kind of scenario that saw Laurel Hubbard contest the weightlifting at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Hubbard transitioned in 2012.

While Olympic sources have confirmed that such a measure is very much the ‘direction of travel’, it is highly unlikely to come into force before the Winter Olympics in Italy next February.

One report suggested that a rule change could be announced in February, but insiders estimated it might take between six months and a year for it to be approved and cleared.

The move would be seen as a box ticked by Coventry, who campaigned to protect the female category on her way to winning the presidential election earlier this year.

It would also avoid any awkward flashpoints with Donald Trump in the build-up to the LA Olympics – in February, the US President signed an executive order to prevent transgender women from competing in female sport.

Such has been the focus on this area that a presentation was delivered by IOC medical, health, and science director Dr Jane Thornton to members in Lausanne last week, which included a science-based review around trans and DSD issues. The IOC denied that any decision has been made on either front and it is understood there has not yet been a presentation to the executive board, which next convenes in December.

An IOC statement to Daily Mail Sport read: ‘An update was given by the IOC’s director of health, medicine and science to the IOC Members last week during the IOC commission meetings. The working group is continuing its discussions on this topic and no decisions have been taken yet.’

Among the points stressed in that presentation was the distinction between transgender and DSD in athletes who have male chromosomes but were raised as female. On the latter, which led to immense controversy at the boxing at Paris 2024, the future landscape is less clear.

It is understood that a rule change around DSD athletes is considered likely in the long run, but faces internal opposition, according to Daily Mail Sport sources.

That separate branch of the debate led to fury in Paris last year when Algeria's Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan won boxing gold medals after being disqualified from the World Championships in 2023 for reportedly failing gender eligibility tests.

The IOC executive committee, which included Coventry at the time, faced huge criticism for permitting them to fight.

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