Madeleine Pape1, Marcus Mazzucco2, Payoshni Mitra, Sone Erikainen
In March 2026, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced a sweeping new policy: as of the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 2028, all competitors wishing to compete in the women’s category at IOC events will be required to have undertaken mandatory genetic sex testing. Only those women and girls who return a negative test result for the SRY gene will be permitted to compete. Those with a positive test result will be faced with a difficult choice between walking away from elite sport or undergoing invasive further testing to determine their body’s sensitivity to testosterone, involving a combination of genetic sequencing, hormonal evaluations, imaging studies, and clinical examination of their breasts, pubic hair development, and genitalia. In both cases, the likelihood of (and risks associated with) such athletes being publicly identified are high.
The policy will likely impact vast numbers of women and girls across the world: the IOC recommends conducting the screening “early in the athletic career,” exposing even athletes at the development level to potentially devastating genetic test results. Given the number of sports and countries in which the policy will be implemented––there are currently 43 sports on the combined summer and winter Olympic programme and over 200 National Olympic Committees (NOCs)––the implementation of the policy is likely to be highly varied, exposing women and girls to a wide range of potential harms; certainly, it will be occurring beyond the oversight of the IOC and International Federations (IFs), with athletes and their families given little real choice but to submit to the test and its consequences.
As researchers, lawyers, and advocates who have been working in this space for years, we observe that the IOC, under the leadership of Kirsty Coventry (the organization’s first woman president) has failed to answer a number of critical questions about the new policy.
The first concerns the policy-making process. How did the IOC arrive at the conclusion that mandatory genetic sex testing was a necessary, reasonable, and proportionate measure for women and girls?
The process remains opaque, and although the IOC’s launch of the policy contained the right buzz words––terms like “athlete-centred approach,” and “evidence-based and expert-informed”––we know very little about what these words actually meant in practice. The list of experts consulted has not been released, the alleged scientific evidence the experts relied upon has not been disclosed, the survey instrument used to collect the opinions of athletes has not been independently analyzed, and, most worryingly, consulted athletes––notably, women with intersex variations from the Global South––have described their consultation as merely tokenistic.
This points to a second key question: upon what evidence has the IOC concluded that mandatory genetic sex testing is justified?
As Andrew Sinclair, the geneticist who discovered the SRY gene, has himself clarified, there is no independent research linking the gene to athletic performance, and even its role in the development of sex-related characteristics is not absolute. More generally, what evidence of performance advantage exists in the two primary groups of women and girls being targeted by the new measure: transgender women and girls, and women and girls with intersex variations? In the case of transgender women and girls, the evidence base remains limited and highly contested, with recent research nevertheless pointing to possibilities for fair inclusion. Indeed, a Belgian court has already rejected the ban on transgender athletes imposed by the Union Cycliste International in 2025 on the basis of insufficient evidence. In the case of women and girls with intersex variations, there exists no independent published research at all.
The International Federation of Sports Medicine has responded to the new IOC policy by stating that “the underlying scientific evidence [remains] limited, heterogeneous and, in several areas, characterized by uncertainty.” If the research is not conclusive, this raises the question of how and why this policy change came about. Given President Coventry made her own personal convictions clear upon her election and well before the IOC’s review of its policy position began, the policy process and its supposed reliance on scientific evidence warrants scrutiny.
Next, how does the IOC plan to oversee the implementation of the new policy?
On this question, IOC leaders have made clear that they currently have no plan for implementation. Rather, they expect to work with NOCs and IFs to roll out the policy. Behind the many logistical concerns black boxed in this performance of collaboration (e.g., Who will pay? Who will conduct the testing? How will the IOC ensure consistency in testing? Who will ensure that athletes have access to education and genetic counselling needed for informed consent? How will data be managed?), there are also questions of legal liability (who will be on the hook for transgressions of domestic and international anti-discrimination, human rights, genetic testing, and privacy laws?). The French Sports Minister has made clear that the new IOC policy runs afoul of domestic laws protecting athletes from such medically unnecessary genetic testing measures. These issues will not simply be resolved through the good will, cooperation, and Olympic spirit of national and international sports organizations.
Finally, and most importantly, how does the IOC plan to mitigate the cascading harms to women and girls?
At stake in such a question is not only legal liability, and how to avoid it, but the very promise of Olympic sport to be a safe and welcoming place for all athletes. The cascading harms that stem from eligibility regulations in international sport have been well documented, with women and girls located in less wealthy countries particularly vulnerable to the traumatic consequences of a positive SRY test result. But all women and girls stand to be negatively impacted by mandatory genetic sex testing, and not only because of how it diminishes their right to free and informed consent: there are already documented cases of women and girls being accused of unfair advantage, and targeted online, simply because of their appearance failing to conform to hegemonic (and often Global North) notions of femininity. This includes the case of a teenage basketballer accused by a Utah lawmaker of being transgender. In defending her accusations, the lawmaker claimed that “it is normal to pause and wonder if people are what they say they are.”
Such consequences––and the complex answers to the questions above––are rarely acknowledged by sports organizations. The structural advantage and weight of the IOC is difficult to counter, giving it the upper hand when it comes to defining which discourses of fairness and evidence become ascendant in policy and public discourse.
In the remainder of this post, we highlight two initiatives aimed at countering the claims of the IOC and other sports organizations and supporting athletes across the world who have been harmed by eligibility regulations.
Humans of Sport
Founded by Dr Payoshni Mitra in 2024, Humans of Sport is a non-profit organization centered on the needs of women and girls harmed by eligibility regulations, particularly those with natural sex variations and located in Africa and Asia. Building on Mitra’s two decades of experience supporting such women to survive and challenge eligibility decisions, Humans of Sport works at the intersection of science, law, human rights, ethics, safeguarding, and governance to hold sporting bodies to the human rights standards they claim to uphold and, ultimately, to transform sport into a realm that respects the agency and dignity of every human in it. It equips impacted athletes to secure their livelihoods, remedy injustice, and strengthen their access to rights, while also supporting them to build their capacity to survive and thrive and to navigate the scrutiny, surveillance, and institutionalized violence they are subjected to in sport. Alongside this direct support, Humans of Sport carries out global strategic coordination, staying responsive to new judgments, emerging policies, and shifting political contexts, while engaging in long-term narrative-building that contests the story of who belongs in sport and centers athletes’ own voices.
Sex Testing in Sport (STS) Consortium
In a context where lobby groups opposing the rights of people who are transgender or have intersex variations are proliferating, new ways of disseminating research and expert analyses of this unfolding catastrophe are sorely needed. As a step in this direction, an interdisciplinary editorial group––comprised of Sone Erikainen (University of Aberdeen), Katrina Karkazis (Amherst College), Marcus Mazzucco (University of Toronto), Sophia Nimphius (Edith Cowan University), and Madeleine Pape (University of Lausanne)––has launched the International Sex Testing in Sport (STS) Consortium, the purpose of which is to provide sports practitioners, journalists, athletes, researchers, students and other interested readers with an independent and transparent analysis of the legal, scientific, ethical, safeguarding, and equity dimensions of sex testing policies in sport. Our first output was to produce a list of Frequently Asked Questions about the new IOC policy, which we released immediately after the policy announcement. Currently available in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, we aim for the FAQ––and all our materials––to be available in multiple languages, so as to support a broad public to understand the far-reaching consequences of mandatory genetic sex testing and ask critical questions of sports organizations.
- Madeleine (she/her/hers) is a sociologist and SNSF Ambizione grand holder at the University of Lausanne’s Institute of Social Sciences and Centre for Gender Studies. Following her career as an Olympic athlete (Australia, Athletics), Madeleine obtained her PhD in Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Madeleine’s research encompasses the regulation of eligibility in women’s sport, gender inequality in sports governance, and the study of sex and gender in biomedical and sports science research. From 2022-2025, Madeleine worked with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to implement the IOC Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sex Variations. ↩︎
- Marcus Mazzucco, J.D. is an adjunct lecturer of sports law in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto, as well as senior legal counsel for the Government of Ontario. His academic research examines athletes’ rights in the Olympic movement and anti-doping system, with a particular focus on data protection, anti-discrimination, and children’s rights.
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