The International Athletics Federation has taken an important shift in its policy towards transgender athletes by excluding them from the female category, which it intends “protect“, announced its president Sebastian Coe on Thursday. “The board (of World Athletics) has decided to exclude male and female transgender athletes who have experienced male puberty from international women’s competitionsCoe announced after three days of Board meetings. “The World Athletics Council has taken clear action to protect the women’s category of our sport“, Estimated the Briton, specifying that the measure would apply from March 31.
The announcement came as a surprise as the body announced at the end of January that it was studying a “priority option“, to toughen the now obsolete current regulation, which regulated the participation of transgender people by asking them to regulate their testosterone levels.
«World Athletics consulted various stakeholders during the first two months of the year, member federations, coaches, the Athletes’ Commission, the IOC and associations of transgender people and the defense of human rights. We found little support for the option offered at first“, said the body in a press release. “For many, the evidence that trans women do not retain an advantage over biological women is insufficient. They want more evidence (…) before considering the option of inclusion in the female category“, detailed Sebastian Coe. “We don’t say ‘no’ forever“, he nuanced, explaining that a specific working group was going to be created to study future scientific developments.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) had asked sports federations in November 2021 to establish their own criteria to allow transgender and intersex people to compete at high level.
World Athletics also tightened its rules on Thursday for intersex athletes like Caster Semenya, who must now maintain their testosterone levels below the threshold of 2.5 nmol / L for 24 months, instead of 5 nmol / L for 6 months to compete in the women’s category. The rules now apply to all disciplines and no longer only to races ranging from 400m to the mile (1,610m), as has been the case since 2018.
This rule had been denounced by the emblematic South African Caster Semenya, double Olympic champion in the 800m, who still refuses to comply with it with hormonal treatment or an operation, after having lost the appeals brought in particular before the Arbitral Tribunal of the sports (TAS).