Transgender atheletes to be allowed to compete as the other sex in the Olympics

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The Olympics are reportedly opening the field of competition to transgender athletes by adopting an updated policy that reflects standards already adopted by other regulatory sports organizations.

As first reported by Outsports, in November the International Olympic Committee received new proposed guidelines from its "Consensus Meeting on Sex Reassignment and Hyperandrogenism," allowing for broader policies for the inclusion of transgender athletes.

Olympics officials have yet to announce formally that the Games have adopted the new guidelines, which can be found on their website. If formally adopted, the potential rules update would bring the Olympics in line with the standards already employed by the NCAA in the United States by allowing both male-to-female and female-to-male transgender athletes to compete without having had surgery.

The Olympics already had rules formally allowing and acknowledging trans athletes' right to compete but with specific provisions under the Stockholm Consensus adopted in 2004 before the Olympics in Athens: Transgender athletes had to have gender reassignment surgery; they must have legal recognition of the gender they were assigned at birth; and they had to have undergone at least two years of hormone replacement therapy after surgery. The proposed new rules would bring the Olympics in line with the NCAA's standard of one year of hormone replacement therapy -- with no surgical requirement -- before being allowed to compete.

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