NANJING, China — World Athletics president Sebastian Coe stated Tuesday that the monitor and discipline’s governing physique has permitted the introduction of cheek swabs and dry blood-spot exams for feminine athletes as a way to preserve “the integrity of competitors.”
The deliberate modifications embody reinstating a model of chromosome testing that was discontinued within the Nineteen Nineties, requiring athletes who compete within the feminine class to undergo a cheek swab or dry blood-spot check for the presence of a gene that signifies whether or not the athlete has a “Y” chromosome current in males.
Coe advised a information convention that athletes must take the check simply as soon as throughout their profession.
“It’s vital to do it as a result of it maintains all the pieces that we’ve been speaking about, and notably not too long ago, about not simply speaking in regards to the integrity of feminine girls’s sport, however truly guaranteeing it,” Coe stated after a two-day assembly of the World Athletics Council in Nanjing. “We really feel this can be a actually vital means of offering confidence and sustaining that absolute give attention to the integrity of competitors.”
It is unclear whether or not the exams can be in place earlier than the world championships in September. Coe stated that the brand new laws can be drafted and {that a} testing supplier can be confirmed over the following few weeks.
Coe, the two-time Olympic champion who was unsuccessful final week in his bid to change into IOC president, has been vocal about “defending the feminine class” in monitor and discipline. He has stated the Worldwide Olympic Committee must take a management function within the transgender debate as a substitute of letting every particular person sport resolve its personal laws.
World Athletics, which in 2023 banned transgender athletes who had transitioned male to feminine and gone by way of male puberty, introduced in February proposed suggestions that will apply strict transgender guidelines to athletes who had been born feminine however had what the group describes as naturally occurring testosterone ranges within the typical male vary.
These suggestions got here solely days after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an govt order barring transgender athletes from competing in women sports activities within the U.S. and pressured the Olympics to do the identical. Los Angeles will host the 2028 Summer time Video games.
Requested whether or not World Athletics felt the coverage would stand up to authorized challenges, Coe stated he was assured after an exhaustive overview.
“I might by no means have set off down this path in 2016-2017 to guard the feminine class in sport” with out being “ready to take the problem head on,” Coe stated.
He added: “We’ve been to the Courtroom of Arbitration on our DSD (variations in intercourse improvement) laws. They’ve been upheld, and so they have once more been upheld after enchantment. So we’ll doggedly shield the feminine class, and we’ll do no matter is critical to do it.”
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