Published March 29, 2026
South African sprinter Caster Semenya, a two-time Olympic 800m champion, said the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) reinstatement of gender verification tests for the 2028 Los Angeles Games was a “disrespect for women”.
Hyperandrogenic athletes also expressed disappointment on Sunday that the move was taken under new IOC President Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe.
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“For me personally, of course it’s harmful because she’s a woman from Africa and I know how African women and women from the Global South are affected by it,” Semenya said on the sidelines of a sports event in Cape Town.
The IOC announced Thursday that only “biological women” will be allowed to compete in women’s events, and that transgender women will not be allowed to compete.
The IOC previously conducted chromosomal sex tests from 1968 to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, but discontinued them in 1999 after pressure from the scientific community and athletes’ committees who questioned their effectiveness.
“This was a failure, and that’s why it was withdrawn,” Semenya said.
“It seems like we now have to prove that we are entitled to participate in sports as women. That’s disrespectful to women.”
Since Semenya won her first world title in the 800m in 2009, she has become a symbol of the struggle of hyperandrogenic athletes to assert their rights, on the track and field, and in the courts.
In 2025, she won a partial victory at the European Court of Human Rights in a seven-year legal battle against athletics’ gender qualification rules.
In a 15-2 ruling, the court’s highest court said Semenya had appealed the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s decision, saying some of her rights to a fair hearing in Switzerland’s highest court had been violated. The court ruled in favor of World Athletics, the international governing body for track and field.
The original lawsuit between Semenya and Monaco-based World Athletics was over whether female athletes who have a typical male chromosome pattern and certain medical conditions that result in naturally high testosterone levels should be allowed to freely compete in women’s sports.
The European Court of Justice’s ruling did not overturn the World Athletics Regulations that effectively ended Semenya’s 800m career, which has won two Olympic gold medals and three world titles since bursting onto the world stage as a teenager in 2009.
IOC policy change resolves conflict with President Trump
In a major shift in policy, the IOC is abandoning the rule introduced in 2021 that allowed individual federations to determine their own policies, and instead introducing policies across Olympic sports.
“Eligibility to participate in women’s category competitions at the Olympic Games and other IOC events (including individual and team competitions) is currently limited to biological females, as determined on the basis of a single SRY genetic screening,” the IOC said in a statement.
Testing is done through a saliva sample, cheek swab or blood sample. It only takes place once in an athlete’s lifetime.
“The policies we have announced are based on science and led by medical experts,” Mr Coventry said.
“At the Olympics, the slightest difference can mean the difference between winning and losing, so it’s clear that it’s unfair for biological males to compete in the female categories. And in some sports, it may not be safe.”
The new policy removes a potential source of conflict between the IOC and US President Donald Trump as the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics approaches.
Shortly after returning to office in January 2025, President Trump issued an executive order banning transgender athletes from women’s sports.
The US leader took credit for the IOC’s new policy in a post on the Truth social network on Thursday.
“I congratulate the International Olympic Committee on its decision to ban male participation in women’s sports,” Trump wrote. “This is only happening because of my strong executive order to stand up for women and girls!”
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Sports such as swimming, track and field, cycling and rowing are banned, but many other sports allow transgender women to compete in the women’s divisions, provided they have lowered their testosterone levels, usually through medication.
The IOC has introduced a new policy after the women’s boxing competition at the 2024 Paris Olympics was disrupted by a gender dispute between Algeria’s Imane Kherif and Taiwan’s Lin Yuting.
Kerif and Lin have been excluded from the International Boxing Association’s 2023 World Championship after the IBA announced they had failed eligibility tests.
However, the IOC allowed both athletes to participate in the Paris Games, saying they were victims of a “sudden and arbitrary decision by the IBA.”
Both boxers went on to win gold medals.
Lin was then allowed to compete in the women’s category at the Los Angeles Summer Games, an event run by World Boxing, the organization that oversees the sport.
