IOC’s new transgender guidance criticised as unfair towards female sport

The International Olympic Committee’s new transgender framework has come under fire from medical experts who work for multiple sports federations, including World Athletics, World Triathlon and the International Cycling Union, who say it opens the door to unfair competition in female sport.

In a notable intervention, the scientists warn that IOC’s new guidance – which states there is no need for trans women to lower their testosterone to compete against natal women – ignores the science on sex, gender and performance and focuses mostly on inclusion. The new framework, which also applies to athletes with differences of sex development, such as the South African 800m runner Caster Semenya, is due to be rolled out after next month’s Winter Olympics. It comes amid the high-profile cases of the weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, the first open trans women to compete in an Olympics, and the US trans woman Lia Thomas, who recently set a number of collegiate swimming records.

However scientists, who are linked with the International Federation of Sports Medicine and European Federation of Sports Medicine Associations, want the IOC to think again. Writing in the British Medical Journal Open Science & Exercise Medicine, they also point out that the IOC’s new position that there should be “no presumption of performance advantage” for trans women “is in stark contrast with the outcome of the 2015 IOC consensus, the scientific evidence, and the subsequent assessment of numerous sports medicine associations/commissions”.

The statement, which is signed by 38 authors, including the head of World Athletics’ medical department, the medical director of cycling’s ruling body the UCI and the chair of World Rowing’s medicine commission, also calls