The Worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC) has launched a brand new sex-testing coverage that may limit the ladies’s class on the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics to organic females.
On Thursday, IOC president Kirsty Coventry outlined the coverage in a video. Beneath the brand new guidelines, all feminine athletes will probably be required to endure a one-time sex-verification testing (a blood pattern, saliva or cheek swab) to detect the presence of the sex-determining area (SRY gene), which is the first gene accountable for initiating male intercourse growth in mammals.
The Worldwide Olympic Committee publicizes new Coverage on the Safety of the Feminine (Ladies’s) Class in Olympic Sport.
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— IOC MEDIA (@iocmedia) March 26, 2026
The testing is meant to find out whether or not an athlete transitioned after male puberty or has variations of intercourse growth (DSD) that will present a testosterone-related efficiency benefit. If the SRY gene is detected, the athlete will probably be ineligible to compete within the girls’s class.
Coventry stated the measures are designed to make sure equity in girls’s sport and are primarily based on scientific proof, with athletes’ finest pursuits in thoughts.
Athletes who check unfavorable will probably be eligible to compete within the girls’s class. Those that check optimistic will probably be ineligible. There’s a slender exception for athletes who’ve 46XY chromosomes, or comparable uncommon DSD circumstances, the place testosterone doesn’t present a efficiency profit.
The IOC’s strategy follows an identical framework launched by World Athletics forward of final 12 months’s World Championships in Tokyo.
These new measures will probably be required for all feminine athletes trying to compete on the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and past.
