Olympics Will Allow Transgender Competitors for 2018 Winter Games

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) confirmed that it would allow transgender athletes to compete in whatever category they wish to participate in during the 2018 Winter Olympics, a report says.

IOC officials  noted that they will not require athletes to compete in categories that match their birth gender nor will there be any gender or sex testing of competitors ahead of the games, Daily Caller reported.

“With regard to Hyperandrogenism in female athletes, there were no regulations in place at the Olympic Games Rio 2016 and there will be no regulations in place at the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 as we are still awaiting the resolution of the Dutee Chand case,” the IOC recently claimed.

The Dutee Chand case concerns the Indian sprinter who is fighting rules that prevent her from competing because she exhibits “female hyperandrogenism,” and has too many natural male traits which may give her an advantage over female opponents.

She was banned from competition because her natural testosterone levels exceeded the IOC’s rules. However, India is appealing the ruling.

This isn’t the first case of  “female hyperandrogenism.” The charge was also made in the case of South African runner Mokgadi Caster Semenya who racked up a series of amazing, record breaking wins which eventually forced questions over her gender. Some feared she might have been a transgender man hiding her status. Others felt she may be violating testosterone level requirements to compete in Olympics games.

Tests were made, though not released publicly, and eventually the IOC decided she was female and was not breaking any rules. Rumors leaked out that Semenya may have certain medical conditions giving her some male traits such as heightened levels of testosterone.

The testosterone level requirements themselves then came under fire for lack of scientific certainty.

As The New York Times  wrote last year, “…the arbitration panel noted, science has not conclusively shown that elevated testosterone provides women with more of a significant competitive edge than factors like nutrition, access to coaching and training facilities, and other genetic and biological variations.”

Some worry that Olympics rules have not caught up to sports medicine and science. Though, more worry that with the rise of transgender lifestyles, the specter of unfair competition lurks.

That fear has become fact in several cases in U.S. high schools, where biological teenage girls were pitted against teen boys claiming to be transgender girls. The results of those encounters, predictably,  were that biological girls lost those contests to the transgender students.