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Freestyle skier Jay Riccomini trains at the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Center of Excellence on May 20, 2024, in Park City, Utah. Riccomini competes in the women's events at World Cup events as a transgender male. He's holding off on taking testosterone until his skiing career is finished. | Rick Bowmer
The International Olympic Committee announced Thursday that only “biological females” may compete at the Olympics.
The new eligibility policy aligns with U.S. President Donald Trump’s "Keeping Men Out Of Women’s Sports” executive order signed in February 2025 that was intended to prevent transgender athletes from competing in all sporting events, including the Olympics.
The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee adopted a ban last July.
Eligibility to compete at the Olympics will be “determined on the basis of a one‑time SRY gene screening” under the policy. Calling it an “evidence-based and expert-informed” policy, the IOC said it “protects fairness, safety and integrity in the female category.”
Previously, the IOC had left decisions about transgender athlete participation up to the international federations over individual sports under the "Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sex Variations" adopted in 2021.
The Associated Press reported that it’s “unclear how many, if any, transgender women are competing at an Olympic level.”
The application of the new policy will start with the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Utah is hosting a second Winter Games, in 2034. The Organizing Committee for the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games acknowledged the change.
“We recognize that this has been an important topic across sport for some time,” Fraser Bullock, the committee’s president and executive chair, said in a statement. “We respect the IOC under President Kirsty Coventry for its work and for providing a pathway for the future.”
“Protecting the female category” was a priority for Coventry, an Olympic champion swimmer from Zimbabwe who became the first African and first woman to lead the Switerland-based IOC last year.
Among her first actions was setting up working groups to study that and other IOC policies.
The IOC said the new policy on transgender athlete participation adopted by the organization’s Executive Board is not retroactive and does not apply to any grassroots or recreational sports programs.
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