New IOC guidelines ease transgender athletes’ road to Rio
For the first time in Olympic history, this summer’s Rio Games could see transgender athletes compete without having to undergo gender re-assignment surgery.
International Olympic Committee medical officials said Sunday they changed the policy to adapt to current scientific, social and legal attitudes on transgender issues.
The guidelines are designed as recommendations — not rules or regulations — for international sports federations and other bodies to follow and should apply for this year’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
“I don’t think many federations have rules on defining eligibility of transgender individuals,” IOC medical director Dr. Richard Budgett said in a telephone interview. “This should give them the confidence and stimulus to put these rules in place.”
Under the previous IOC guidelines, approved in 2003, athletes who transitioned from male to female or vice versa were required to have reassignment surgery and at least two years of hormone therapy to be eligible to compete.
Now, surgery will no longer be required, with female-to-male transgender athletes eligible to take part in men’s competitions “without restriction.”
Meanwhile, male-to-female transgender athletes will need to demonstrate that their testosterone level has been below a certain cut-off point for at least one year before their first competition.
“It is necessary to ensure insofar as possible that trans athletes are not excluded from the opportunity to participate in sporting competition,” the IOC said in a document posted on its website that outlines the guidelines. “The overriding sporting objective is and remains the guarantee of fair competition.
“To require surgical anatomical changes as a precondition to participation is not necessary to preserve fair competition and may be inconsistent with developing legislation and notions of human rights,” it added.
The guidelines were approved after a meeting in November in Lausanne, Switzerland, of Olympic officials and medical experts.
Budgett said there were no plans for the guidelines to be sent for approval by the IOC executive board.
“This is a scientific consensus paper, not a rule or regulation,” he said. “It is the advice of the medical and scientific commission, and what we consider the best advice.”
No Olympians have ever competed under the gender they weren’t assigned at birth. Notably, Caitlyn Jenner, who won a gold medal in the decathlon at the 1976 Olympics as Bruce Jenner, and Balian Buschbaum, who placed sixth in the pole vault at the 2000 Olympics as Yvonne Buschbaum, both began identifying as the opposite gender publicly later in life.
There are, however, professional transgender athletes who compete today, including cyclists Natalie van Gogh of the Netherlands and Michelle Dumaresq of Canada, and Team USA duathlete Chris Mosier, who identifies as male. Van Gogh and Dumaresq have had gender-reassignment surgery; Mosier hasn’t.
Mosier, 35, is awaiting approval to compete at the World Championships in Spain in June, which could determine whether he will be eligible to earn an Olympic spot.