REWRITING THE RULES
Sports governing body works to adapt to today’s scientific and social realities
For the first time in Olympic history, this summer’s Rio Games could see transgender athletes compete without having to undergo gender re-assignment surgery.
International Olympic Committee medical officials said Sunday they changed the policy to adapt to current scientific, social and legal attitudes on transgender issues.
The guidelines are designed as recommendations — not rules or regulations — for international sports federations and other bodies to follow and should apply for this year’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
“I don’t think many federations have rules on defining eligibility of transgender individuals,” IOC medical director Dr. Richard Budgett said.
“This should give them the confidence and stimulus to put these rules in place.”
Under the previous IOC guidelines, approved in 2003, athletes who transitioned from male to female or vice versa were required to have reassignment surgery followed by at least two years of hormone therapy in order to be eligible to compete.
Now, surgery will no longer be required, with female-to-male transgender athletes eligible for men’s competitions “without restriction.”
Meanwhile, male-to-female transgender athletes must demonstrate that their testosterone level has been below a certain cutoff point for at least a year before their first competition.
“It is necessary to ensure insofar as possible that trans athletes are not excluded from the opportunity to participate in sporting competition,” the IOC said in a document posted on its website. “The overriding sporting objective is and remains the guarantee of fair competition.”
“To require surgical anatomical changes as a precondition to participation isn’t necessary to preserve fair competition and may be inconsistent with developing legislation and notions of human rights,” it added.
The guidelines, first reported by Outsports.com, were approved after a November meeting of Olympic officials and medical experts in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Budgett said there were no plans for the guidelines to be sent for approval by the IOC executive board.
“This is a scientific consensus paper, not a rule or regulation,” he said. “It’s the advice of the medical and scientific commission and what we consider the best advice.”
No Olympians have ever competed under the gender they weren’t assigned at birth. Notably, Caitlyn Jenner, who won a gold medal in the decathlon at the 1976 Olympics as Bruce Jenner, began identifying as the opposite gender publicly later in life.
There are, however, professional transgender athletes who compete today, including cyclists Natalie van Gogh of the Netherlands and Michelle Dumaresq of Canada, and Team USA duathlete Chris Mosier, who identifies as male.
Van Gogh and Dumaresq have both undergone gender reassignment surgery; Mosier has not.
Mosier, 35, is currently awaiting approval to compete at the World Championships in Aviles, Spain, this June. Currently, the International Triathlon Union, which oversees the race, uses guidelines set out in 2003 that require transgender athletes to have undergone gender reassignment surgery.
The IOC document also cited the case of hyperandrogenism, or the presence of high levels of testosterone in female athletes.
Indian sprinter Dutee Chand was suspended by the IAAF in 2014 due to hyperandrogenism and missed the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games. But the Court of Arbitration for Sport suspended the rule last year, saying the IAAF had failed to prove that women with naturally high levels of testosterone had a competitive edge. Chand was cleared to compete.
The issue of gender verification gained global attention when South African runner Caster Semenya was ordered to undergo sex tests after winning the 800-metre world title in 2009. She was eventually cleared by the IAAF and won silver in the 800m at the 2012 London Olympics.
The IOC used to conduct gender verification tests at the Olympics, but those chromosome-based screenings were dropped before the 2000 Sydney Games because they were deemed unscientific and unethical.