Olympics committee expected to reverse course on men in women’s sports
Photo by Li Jing/Xinhua via Getty Images
Last year, the committee faced heated controversy after Algerian trans-identifying boxer Imane Khelif beat a woman to tears in the ring. A report later revealed a medical document showing that Khelif, who took home the gold medal after dominating the 66 kg women’s competition, has XY chromosomes.
The IOC’s shift in opinion on the issue of trans-identifying athletes follows a change in leadership in June of this year. The new president of the IOC, Kirsty Coventry, indicated that there was “overwhelming support” for changing the rules to “protect the female category.”
“We have to do that to ensure fairness. And we have to do it with scientific approach and with the inclusion of the international federations who have done a lot of work in that area. So we have to bring in the experts — that will take a little bit of time — and the international federations so that we have full buy-in and cohesion on this specific topic,” Coventry said at a press conference shortly after becoming president.
Coventry said the rules will not have a retroactive effect, indicating an unwillingness to revisit the Khelif controversy: “We are not going to be doing anything retrospectively. We are going to be looking forward. And again, from the members that were here, it was: What are we learning from the past, and how are we going to leverage that and move that forward to the future, and how are we going to strengthen the movement as we move into the future?”
The policy change will likely be announced in early February before the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics in Italy, according to Fox News.
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