Track organizers ban transgender women from elite competitions

World Athletics has banned transgender women from competing in elite female competitions if they have gone through male puberty, the sport's governing body said Thursday.

Organization president Sebastian Coe said at a news conference that the decision by the World Athletics Council to exclude transgender women was based «on the overarching need to protect the female category.»

Coe added that World Athletics would form a task force to study transgender inclusion that would be chaired by a transgender athlete.

Also on Thursday, World Athletics voted to end its eight-year doping ban for the Russian Athletics Federation, but the country's athletes, and those of Belarus, will remain excluded from international competition because of an ongoing separate ban over the invasion of Ukraine.

The World Athletics Council kept its ban on Russian athletes in international events in place «for the foreseeable future» — a move that goes against the International Olympic Committee's efforts to find a way for Russian athletes to compete as neutrals in upcoming events.

The council also voted to tighten restrictions on athletes with differences in sex development, cutting the maximum amount of plasma testosterone for athletes in half to 2.5 nanomoles per liter.

The tighter testosterone rules will affect athletes such as two-time Olympic 800-meter champion Caster Semenya, Christine Mboma, the reigning Olympic silver medalist in the 200 meters, and Francine Niyonsaba, who finished runner-up to Semenya in the 800 at the 2016 Olympics.

World Aquatics, swimming's world governing body, voted in June, with 71% of the national federations in favor, to bar transgender women from elite competition if they had experienced any part of male puberty. A