LONDON (INSIDE THE GAMES)—After a recent court decision in London stated that a person’s sex is defined at birth, self-proclaimed defenders of women’s sports have intensified the pressure to ban transgender athletes from competing in the female category, with the current World Athletics boss leading the charge.
By ruling that the legal definition of a woman is not established by a gender recognition certificate but rather by her physical attributes in the delivery room, the landmark verdict on Wednesday was a celebrated win for those who have passionately opposed such athlete’s participation alongside women, like Coe, United States President Donald Trump or Fiona McAnena, the director of campaigns at the Sex Matters charity. “There are now no excuses for sports governing bodies that are still letting trans-identifying men into the women’s category,” she told the PA news agency.
Coe, who recently ran for the top seat at the International Olympic Committee and lopsidedly lost to eventual President Kirsty Coventry in March’s elections, campaigned heavily against the inclusion of transgender athletes and doubled-down on his stance after the announcement by the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court.
“Well, of course, I welcome the ruling. First of all, I think it underpins common sense, but secondly, it removes a lot of legal uncertainty and interpretation. The philosophy that we hold dear in World Athletics is the protection, the promotion of the integrity of women’s sport. It is really important in a sport that is permanently trying to attract more women that they enter a sport believing there is no biological glass ceiling here” he told the BBC.
The 68-year-old official has been a frequent critic regarding the red-hot debate, which gained traction during the past Paris 2024 Summer Games in the boxing competition, as two gold medallist in the women’s category, Imane Khelif from Algeria and Lin Yu ting from Taiwan, competed despite failing gender eligibility test conducted by the International Boxing Association, which remains unrecognised by the IOC. The Olympic body insists both are women and that the controversy is by no means related to transgender issues, yet its more fervent opposers made it a battleground, leading up to recent spike in legal action against such athletes.
“The judges mentioned fairness in sport this morning. The law was always clear that everyone male can be excluded to provide fair, safe sport for women and girls, but some people claimed it was unkind or complicated to do so. It’s neither of those — it’s essential for fairness and safety for everyone female,” McAnena insisted after the verdict.
Coe, whose federation introduced a swab test looking for the SRY gene in elite athletes who wish to compete in the women’s category at international events earlier this year, alludes that such positive result “almost always” aligns with the male Y chromosome and “is used as a highly accurate proxy for biological sex”.
Besides World Athletics, the cycling and swimming federations have also tightened policies to effectively ban transgender competitors while some athletes and former standouts like British swimmer Sharron Davies, who won an Olympic silver medal at Moscow 1980, voiced their opposition as well. “I think it’s just really important that we can define what a woman is. It doesn’t mean to say that we can’t respect people across the whole of society, however they wish to present themselves. My position was always one that, biologically, women are very different from men,” Davies underlined to BBC Sport.
While current IOC guidelines defer on this matter to international federations, both the transgender debate and gender eligibility concerns remain unresolved, as was evidenced during Paris 2024’s boxing tournament that the global body directly supervised as the IBA stood still. Since then, the Olympic Movement has welcomed newly- created World Boxing into the sporting fold as its only recognised federation.
As for Coe, he first introduced an outright transgender ban in 2023 for athletic events, clashing with the IOC, who has long been opposed to gender testing and insisted on that front during the past Olympics, citing “privacy issues” on behalf of the affected persons, as well as legitimate concern for their physical and psychologycal wellbeing. The Briton argued however, that the latest swab test is non-invasive and helps protect all athletes, with the majority being in favour. “That was a very important step, and it’s been broadly welcomed in sport and that’s the position we’re in,” he emphasized. “Let me be clear, the World Athletics policy is very clearly defined, and it is around elite female sport – for us that is absolutely vital. This is a very different issue, and it is really important that we have clarity at the highest level of sport.”
Even as political leaders like Trump, high-ranking officials like Coe and all types of legal courts push the ‘no transgenders allowed’ agenda, the question of what to do with such athletes remains unanswered, since there is currently not many specific categories that allow them to compete: curiously enough, British Triathlon stepped forward in 2022 to offer some sort of shelter by becoming the first British sporting body to establish an open category for such cases. Sport England, which is responsible for developing grassroots sport nationally, alleged that it “is not a regulator of sport and we do not run facilities. However, we do provide guidance on requirements around inclusion, safety and fairness to ensure that the needs of all groups are met,” the BBC reported.
In America, Trump has kept the pressure at full tilt since taking office in January and, just this Wednesday as the UK ruling became public, the US Justice Department announced that it was taking legal action against the state of Maine for refusing to comply with the presidential executive order barring transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports.
Besides its well-known discourse, the new Republican administration has not held back regarding visa policies either and has put the clamps down regarding said participants, pronouncing them unwelcome for the upcoming 2028 Summer Olympics, set to be hosted by Los Angeles. Per a New York Times report last February, the US government had already started instructing worldwide consular officials to deny visa applications made by transgender athletes seeking to enter the country in order to compete in sporting events “while also opening the door on lifelong blocks on visas for applicants who are judged to have ‘misrepresented’ their sex in their application.”
While the IOC has publicly insisted that it intends to operate without political interference, an unnamed US official recently warned reporters that “if you are coming into the country and you are claiming that you are a woman, but you are a male here to compete against women, we’re going to be reviewing that for fraud.”
Coe won’t and can’t go as far, yet the latest decision from the UK’s Supreme Court feels like another twist in his and others’ direction while the transgender debate rages on. “Inclusivity is a very important element in our sport, and we hold that sacrosanct, and our policies are not preventing transgender competitors from wanting to enjoy the physicality of sport. We are saying, at elite level, for you to compete in the female category, you have to be biologically female,” concluded the Briton….PACNEWS