In a move to safeguard the integrity of women’s sports, World Athletics has concluded plans to introduce mandatory biological sex verification testing for all athletes competing in female categories.
According to the council, the tests aim to verify whether an athlete has transitioned to female after undergoing male puberty or has differences in sex development that provide testosterone advantages.
This policy, overseen by World Athletics President, Sebastian Coe, addresses the gender eligibility issue two years after banning individuals assigned male at birth from competing in female events.
During a press briefing following a World Athletics Council meeting on Wednesday, Coe stated that the organization may adopt non-invasive cheek swab tests or dry blood tests, which only need to be conducted once on an athlete.
“This we feel is a really important way of providing confidence and maintaining that absolute focus on the integrity of competition. Neither of these is invasive. They are necessary and they will be done to absolute medical standards,” he said.
“The pre-clearance testing will be for athletes to be able to compete in the female category. The process is very straightforward, frankly, very clear, and it’s an important one and we will work on the timelines,” Coe added.
This follows United States President Donald Trump, ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, saying there are only two sexes – male and female – while calling on sports to ban transgender women from women’s events.
The International Olympic Committee has previously called a return to sex testing a “bad idea”, but incoming IOC President Kirsty Coventry is not ruling it out, having also talked about protecting the female category.
“This is a conversation that’s happened, and the international federations have taken a far greater lead in this conversation. What I was proposing is to bring a group together with the international federations and really understand that each sport is slightly different”
“We know in equestrian, sex is really not an issue, but in other sports it is. So what I’d like to do again is bring the international federations together and sit down and try and come up with a collective way forward for all of us to move,” she said.
