Transgender women are reportedly set to be banned from competing in female competitions.
The International Olympic Committee is set to announce a ban early next year.
It follows a science-based review of evidence on the permanent physical advantages of being born male.
Previously, Olympic sports had the power individually to decide whether transgender women could compete with reduced testosterone levels.
This will now be changed, according to The Times.
Athletics and swimming already have bans in place for athletes who have been through male puberty, but many events haven’t implemented the changes.
IOC president Kirsty Coventry is likely to have been behind the changes after she repeatedly affirmed her desire to “protect the female category”.
Dr Jane Thornton, the IOC’s medical and scientific director, presented the review’s findings to members at a meeting in Lausanne last week, according to the report.
Transgender women are set to be banned from competing in female competitions, according to reports
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One source told the publication: “It was a very scientific, factual and unemotional presentation which quite clearly laid out the evidence.”
A second IOC insider stated that there had been overwhelmingly positive feedback from IOC members regarding the presentation.
The announcement could be made around the IOC session at the Milan-Cortina winter Olympics in early February.
Despite the policy announcement set in stone, the report claims some work remains to be done to ensure the new policy is legally watertight.
New IOC president Kirsty Coventry has vowed to protect the female category | ReutersMs Coventry, who is herself a former Olympic swimmer from Zimbabwe, was elected to the position earlier this year.
Speaking on her current rules in July: “We understand there will be differences depending on the sports.
“We should make the effort to place emphasis on the protection of the female category and we should ensure that this is done in consensus with all the stakeholders.
“But we need to do that with a scientific approach and the inclusion of the international federations who have already done a lot of work in this area.”
Imane Khelif was permitted to compete at the Paris Olympics by the IOC due to their gender eligibility rules | Imane KhelifThe new policy will also reportedly cover differences in sex development athletes.
This would affect those who were raised as girls from birth but have male chromosomes and male levels of testosterone.
The new rules, which will aim to make the games fairer for all participants, follow a trans row at the boxing tournament at the Paris 2024 Olympics, where Imane Khelif from Algeria and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting, won gold medals despite having been disqualified from the previous year’s World Championships for allegedly failing to meet gender eligibility criteria.
World Boxing, the new international boxing federation, which the IOC has recognised since Paris, has now introduced mandatory sex testing and has said Khelif will not be able to compete in the female category until she undergoes the test.