The IOC stated eligibility for the feminine class could be decided by a screening to detect the SRY gene – the sex-determining area Y gene – which is a part of the Y chromosome and causes male traits to develop.
“The IOC considers that SRY gene screening by way of saliva, cheek swab or blood pattern is unintrusive in comparison with different potential strategies,” it stated.
“Athletes who display screen destructive for the SRY gene completely fulfill this coverage’s eligibility standards for competitors within the feminine class.
“Except there’s motive to imagine {that a} destructive studying is in error, this shall be a once-in-a-lifetime take a look at.”
The IOC stated athletes who failed the take a look at would “proceed to be included in all different classifications for which they qualify. For instance, they’re eligible for any male class, together with in a chosen male slot inside any combined class, and any open class, or in sports activities and occasions that don’t classify athletes by intercourse.”
Till this announcement, the IOC had left intercourse eligibility rules to the governing our bodies of particular person sports activities, fairly than making use of a common strategy.
Whereas sports activities similar to athletics, swimming, biking and rowing have introduced in bans, many others allowed transgender ladies to compete in feminine competitors in the event that they lowered their testosterone ranges.
The ban can even cowl athletes with a DSD.
It is a uncommon situation through which an individual’s hormones, genes and/or reproductive organs could also be a mixture of female and male traits.
Two-time Olympic ladies’s 800m champion Caster Semenya’s DSD means she has male XY chromosomes.
Beforehand, DSD athletes who had not been via male puberty may compete in ladies’s sport, offered they stored their testosterone inside sure ranges.
