At her first official press conference as the new president of the International Olympic Committee, Kirsty Coventry announced a significant shift in the IOC’s stance on transgender athletes in women’s sports. Coventry said Thursday that there is “overwhelming support” among IOC members to safeguard the integrity of women’s competition.
Speaking with Fox News, Coventry emphasized that protecting the female athletic category must remain the IOC’s primary objective. “We understand that there’ll be differences depending on the sport… but it was very clear from the members that we have to protect the female category, first and foremost to ensure fairness,” she said.
However, Coventry added that any changes to the IOC’s transgender policy will rely heavily on a scientific, evidence-based approach. She noted the importance of involving international sports federations that have already conducted extensive research and implemented regulations. “We need to do that with a scientific approach and the inclusion of the international federations who have already done a lot of work in this area,” she explained.
Coventry revealed that IOC members largely favor updating the guidelines to mirror the World Athletics model, which restricts transgender-identifying male athletes from women’s categories if they have undergone male puberty. “It was very clear from the membership the discussion around this has to be done with medical and scientific research at the core,” Coventry stated.
She stressed that policy changes would only apply to future competitions and would not retroactively alter results from past events. This announcement arrives in the aftermath of the 2024 Paris Olympics, where two transgender-identifying male athletes won gold in women’s boxing despite earlier failing gender-eligibility tests.
Coventry pointed to a United Nations study showing that nearly 900 medals have been awarded to transgender male athletes in place of women—600 medal opportunities lost by women in more than 400 competitions across 29 sports. “The replacement of the female sports category with a mixed-sex category has resulted in an increasing number of female athletes losing opportunities, including medals, when competing against males,” the report stated.
By placing fairness and scientific rigor at the core of policy reform, the IOC is setting a new course in balancing inclusion with athletic equity under Coventry’s leadership.
