World Athletics to introduce mandatory sex testing for female competitions

By Eleni Poulios

World Athletics, the international governing body of athletics, have stated that they will be introducing mandatory sex testing for people who are entering any female competition.

The aim is to verify that the competitors are biologically female.

The organisation deems it to be necessary in order to protect women’s sports.

Two years ago, World Athletics banned anyone who was assigned a male gender at birth from participating in female events – a decision made to address gender eligibility issues.

Now, Sebastian Coe, the president of World Athletics, has decided to tackle this issue by taking it a step further.

Non-invasive swab tests to be introduced

At a World Athletics council meeting on Tuesday, he brought up the possibility of adopting non-invasive swab checks or dry blood tests.

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 timelines. Neither of these are invasive.”

“They are necessary and they will be done to absolute medical standards.”

These types of tests will only have to be carried out on an athlete once, and they will verify whether someone has transitioned to a female after going through male puberty.

It will also confirm if there were any differences in their sex development that would provide testosterone advantages.

“This we feel is a really important way of providing confidence and maintaining that absolute focus on the integrity of competition, ” he stated.

All of this follows a recent statement by US president Donald Trump, who, ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, made it clear that he believes there to be only two sexes: male and female.

He also went further and called for transgender people to be completely banned from all sports.

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Sex testing in sports

Sex testing in sports has already been discussed in the past, but the International Olympic Committee labelled it as “a bad idea”.

Kirsty Coventry, the incoming new president of the IOC, however, is not against the proposal since she is aiming to protect the female category.

In an interview, she said: “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 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 to come up with a collective way forward for all of us to move.”

Last year, the UN’s special rapporteur on violence against women and girls called on the IOC to reintroduce sex testing for female athletes.

“Certificates of femininity” were introduced at the 1968 Mexico Games, but those were deemed unscientific and unethical and were, therefore, dropped.

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