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≡ NEW IOC WOMEN’S RULES ≡
As soon as the International Olympic Committee announced its new rules on “protection of the female category” on Tuesday, everyone knew the next test will come in multiple courts.
The IOC announced, in summary, that for the Los Angeles 2028 Games and onward:
● “Eligibility for any female category event at the Olympic Games or any other IOC event, including individual and team sports, is now limited to biological females, determined on the basis of a one-time SRY gene screening.”
● “It is not retroactive and does not apply to any grassroots or recreational sports programmes.”
An appeal of the rules to the Court of Arbitration for Sport is sure and perhaps the first stop, but look for a filing with the European Court of Human Rights as well. And in front of one or both will be South Africa’s two-time Olympic women’s 800 m champion, Caster Semenya.
The 2012 and 2016 Olympic winner and World Champion in 2009-11-17 is now 35 and has been in essentially continuous litigation against World Athletics, whose newest rules adopted in 2025 mirror the IOC’s new rules. Semenya had taken testosterone-reduction treatment from 2010-15, but this was ended with the 2025 ruling in the Dutee Chand case in India. New regulations were issued in 2018 and Semenya has been fighting successive sets of regulations since then.
Semenya told Britain’s Sky News:
“If we have to say women must stop taking part in Olympics, so be it. I will encourage athletes to come together as a class action … because this does not make sense. It does not save women’s sport.
“This regulation is totally shameful. It’s something that her [IOC chief Kirsty Coventry/ZIM] as a president should have not allowed such to happen.”
Asked about the IOC’s insistence that individuals with male-trait “Y” chromosomes have significant advantages throughout their lives relative to sport, Semenya slapped back:
“Based on what? There’s no scientific proof about what has been said. It’s an ideology. …
“There is no respect for women. The minute you start asking a woman to be tested to take part in sports, that’s not dignity. “Testing a girl, a child, it is harmful and it is shameful.”
There are multiple studies on the topic and World Athletics adopted an SRY-gene test in mid-2025, which was fully implemented for the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo (JPN) last September. That rule has not yet been challenged in a court, but may yet be.
Semenya has lost at every stage of her battle with World Athletics, losing the key case in the Court of Arbitration for Sport in April 2019, where the panel found that she was, in fact, discriminated against, but:
“[T]he majority of the Panel accepts that the IAAF has discharged its burden of establishing that regulations governing the ability of female athletes with 46 XY DSD to participate in certain events are necessary to maintain fair competition in female athletics by ensuring that female athletes who do not enjoy the significant performance advantage caused by exposure to levels of circulating testosterone in the adult male range do not have to compete against female athletes who do enjoy that performance advantage.”
Semenya’s appeal was dismissed by the Swiss Federal Tribunal, so she tried the European Court of Human Rights, which noted that the Swiss court had made a significant review, but still found that “limited” and remanded the case back to the Swiss last October for further examination.
Now it looks as if she wants to continue her fight by starting a new one.
Observed: Asked specifically during Tuesday’s announcement for the documentation behind the IOC’s new rules, IOC medical director Dr. Jane Thornton (CAN) said none would be provided and referred to available lists of papers and studies on the topic.
The leader in this space has been World Athletics, with President Sebastian Coe (GBR) announcing the policy recommendation in March 2025, saying:
“We’ve been to the Court of Arbitration on our DSD [differences in sex development] regulations; they’ve been upheld and they’ve again been upheld after appeal, so we will doggedly protect the female category and we’ll do whatever is necessary to do it and we’re not just talking about it.”
The IOC has now joined them, and U.N. Special Rapporteur for Violence Against Women and Girls Reem Alsalem (JOR), who also asked for this kind of test in October 2024.
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