The transgender guidelines for elite sport have been updated by the International Olympic Committee in an effort to keep women’s sport fair, following division over the original version.
Former swimmer Sharron Davies and cyclist Nicole Cooke were among the athletes who criticised the IOC when they approved new guidelines in November last year saying trans women seeking to compete in female competitions should have “no presumption of advantage”.
They slammed the original guidelines for not providing enough detail.
The updated statement reads, according to the Daily Mail: “Principle 4 [fairness] recognises that sports organisations may at times need to issue eligibility criteria for sex-segregated competition to maintain a fair and proportionate distribution of competitive advantages among participants.”
“It also recognises the particular importance of advancing equality for women in sport and preserving fair and meaningful competition for elite women athletes, which may require criteria that limit eligibility in some cases.”
The guidelines were published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
At the centre of the fierce debate was the high profile case of US swimmer Lia Thomas.
Thomas dominated US women’s college swimming as a student athlete at the University of Pennsylvania where just a few years earlier she competed as a male.
Some, including several teammates, said she had an unfair physiological advantage and should be barred from competing, while others argued she should be allowed to compete freely as a woman.
Another well-known case at the centre of the controversy was that of British cyclist Emily Bridges, who was blocked from competing at the Commonwealth Games earlier this year after British Cycling suspended their trans policy and inclusion rules were tightened by global cycling governing body Union Cycliste Internationale.
The Daily Mail reports the new 5188-word statement is portrayed as a clarification of the existing framework by addressing each of its 10 categories, or “principles” so that individual sports ruling bodies have more clarity.
It recommends eligibility criteria equally consider the inclusion of transgender athletes and fairness for women and that the opinion of scientific and medical experts are taken into account along with human rights advocates.
The new paper “acknowledges that testosterone may be an important factor shaping performance in elite athletes in certain sports” but that it is too crude a determinant of an athlete’s eligibility.
Instead, it recommends criteria to rely on robust data drawn from the athlete group being regulated and consider specific demands of each sport.
For instance, Australian rules football’s elite transgender eligibility policy includes an assessment of trans athletes’ height, weight, bench press and squad capabilities.
The statement calls for more funding from stakeholders to support further study into the contentious issue, and says gender-based eligibility criteria should not also be applied to youth and community sport, where the inclusion of transgender and DSD athletes should be prioritised.
A position paper co-published by the International Federation of Sports Medicine (FIMS) in January and with 38 signatories said the original statement “was drafted mainly from a human rights perspective”.
Yannis Pitsiladis, co-author of the statement and a member of the IOC‘s medical and scientific commission, told The Mail on Sunday: “This position statement update on the IOC framework and the extraordinary efforts that have gone into developing this consensus on what it can mean in practice is, in my opinion, the most important and constructive development in this field since the publication of the IOC consensus statement on the topic in 2015”.
Pitsiladis added: “Beyond the text, this position statement signals a monumental change in modus operandi to unify science, medicine, legal and human rights. This is the main achievement here.
“And while we are only at the beginning, we now have the foundation and resolve to do what it takes to best help individual IFs [international federations] to develop their own policy that is evidenced-based, fair and as inclusive as possible.”
In June, plans were revealed for swimming to become the first sport to set up an “open category” to allow transgender athletes to compete in a separate class at the elite level.
President of the governing body FINA, Husain Al-Musallam, said he did not want any athlete to be told they cannot compete at the highest level.
The policy would exclude many transgender athletes from women’s elite swimming.
