transgender runners excluded from women’s competitions

2023-07-14 16:18:00

These new rules will come into force on July 17 but may change in the future according to the evolution of scientific knowledge according to the International Cycling Union.

By LL with AFP Transgender female athletes are now excluded from women’s competitions. (Illustration) © TOM GOYVAERTS / Belga / AFP Published on 07/14/2023 at 4:18 p.m.

In turn, the International Cycling Union (UCI) announced on Friday that it would ban the participation in international competitions of female transgender athletes who made their transition after puberty.

“From now on, the participation of female transgender athletes who have made their transition after their (male) puberty in women’s events on the UCI international calendar in the various disciplines will be prohibited in all categories,” the UCI said in a press release.

Until then, the UCI authorized transgender women who had experienced male puberty to participate in women’s events if their testosterone levels – a male hormone secreted in greater quantities in men than in women – were reduced to 2.5 nanomoles per month. liter in the previous two years.

At the end of 2021, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) gave up establishing uniform guidelines for all sports, leaving control to the various international federations.

World Athletics, which oversees athletics, has since decided to exclude transgender people from women’s athletics competitions.

“Ensuring equal opportunities”

According to the president of the UCI, the Frenchman David Lappartient, it is the “duty” of the body “to guarantee, above all, equal opportunities between all competitors”. And “it is this imperative, he adds, which led the UCI to conclude” that it “was not possible, as a precautionary measure, to authorize” female transgender athletes “to run in female categories.

These new rules will come into force on July 17 but may change in the future according to the evolution of scientific knowledge, said the UCI.

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This decision, taken during a steering committee meeting in extraordinary session on July 5, applies to the various competitions organized under the aegis of the UCI, whose men’s categories are renamed “Men/Open”. Any athlete who does not meet the conditions for participation in the women’s events will be admitted without any restriction.

To support its decision, the UCI observes that “scientific knowledge does not confirm that at least two years of gender-confirming hormone therapy with a target plasma testosterone concentration of 2.5 nmol/L are sufficient to eliminate completely the advantages given by testosterone during puberty in men”.

“Organization in disrepair”

Furthermore, she continues, “there is a large inter-individual variability in the response to gender-confirming hormone therapy” and “it also cannot be excluded that biomechanical factors such as the shape and arrangement of the bones of their forelimbs are a persistent advantage for female transgender athletes.”

The UCI follows the British Cycling Federation, which announced in May that it would ban transgender women from its women’s events. A previous rule required runners to demonstrate low testosterone levels for twelve months prior to competition in order to compete.

But in April, the Federation had suspended this regulation after a transgender woman, Emily Bridges, wanted to participate in the national omnium championships in the women’s category when she had been declared ineligible by the UCI.

Bridges had condemned the new policy, calling it a “violent act” and calling the Federation a “failing organization.”