Why Trump’s transgender edict spells chaos for 2028 Olympics

It surprised no one that US President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.

Trump has been campaigning on that platform for the past 18 months.

The EO is framed from the policy perspective that “In recent years, many educational institutions and athletic associations have allowed men to compete in women’s sports. This is demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls, and denies women and girls the equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports”.

Such statements ignore any nuance or human element attached to the topic. Taken alongside a preceding EO signed by Trump on the day of his inauguration – “It is the policy of the United States to recognize [sic] two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality” – US law seemingly no longer recognises the concept of a transgender person.

The abruptness and harshness of the shift in legal position must leave many US citizens not only reeling, but terrified. For themselves, their family members and their friends.

Applying Trump’s logic, the complex question of transgender participation in women’s sport becomes easy: Simply apply your signature and the world straightens up.

Credit: Illustration: Simon Letch

In reality, the reverse is true.

All this new policymaking is blind to the fact that the imperatives relevant to protecting the integrity of Olympic and elite level competition aren’t the same as for participation sport. The rules governing the involvement of transgender players in Friday evening pee-wee football games should have little in common with those that dictate whether national-level swimmers and hurdlers should be allowed to compete against cisgender rivals.

It is assumed, also, that the president doesn’t comprehend the distinction between a transgender person and someone with differences of sexual development – or DSD – conditions, including the two female boxers that competed at the Paris Olympics amid a torrent of misinformation.

Imane Khelif, the Algerian who won gold in Paris, isn’t transgender, despite erroneous reports to the contrary. But like many matters where Trump is concerned, intractable issues are distilled to a mere few paragraphs, with extinguishment of funding or other threats used as a stick to encourage compliance.

Algeria’s Imane Khelif (left) fights China’s Yang Liu in the women’s 66-kilogram gold medal bout in Paris last year.Credit: AP

The next Olympics are scheduled for Los Angeles in 2028, during the final year of Trump’s term of office. What could the President’s Executive Order and related policies mean for those Games?

Trump has signalled that his new paradigm covers the Olympic Games – and by logic also the Paralympics. But neither the LA 2028 organisers nor the International Olympic and Paralympic Committees signed up for any of it.

Among other matters, Trump has declared that the Department of Homeland Security will patrol the US borders to forbid entry to any transgender athletes daring to try and pass through LAX to compete at the Games. Because, apparently, the Trump administration won’t sit by and “watch men beat better female athletes”.

To put that statement in some context, the Berlin 1936 Olympic Games represent the abhorrent nadir for the Olympic movement. By that year, and apart from myriad other atrocities being inflicted, Jewish and Roma people had been systematically excluded from organised sport in Germany. Nonetheless, some black and Jewish athletes took part in competition in Berlin.

The question as to the participation of transgender athletes in Olympic and international-level elite athletic competition is increasingly answered by the exclusion of such athletes. Major international federations have adopted policies aimed at deeming ineligible for female competition any female transgender athlete who has gone through male puberty.

World Athletics has proceeded along similar lines, and this week it has emerged that the organisation may soon introduce swabbing for all athletes wishing to compete in female competition. Conversely, basketball’s international federation is one of many others still grappling with the complexity of it all.

The uncertainty is caused by the uselessness of the IOC’s transgender policy. In late 2021, the IOC published its Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sex Variations. Six or so pages of high-falutin’ statements of principle, absent adequate detail.

While the IOC states its position that athletes should be allowed passage to compete in the available category that aligns with their self-determined gender identity, it also passes the buck onto the international federations by saying they must ensure no athletes are afforded an unfair advantage if permitted to compete in a gender category not aligned with their biological sex.

Trump abhors a vacuum – filling a power void is where he does some of his most effective work. The IOC itself must set clear and unequivocal policy to protect the integrity of female sport and female athletic competition where, presently, the IOC’s failed by such measures.

There’s no hope of that happening before the IOC’s next session next month, at which its members will elect a new president to replace the outgoing Thomas Bach. If the IOC elects a progressive candidate from among the seven standing – like Sebastian Coe, the current head of world athletics – the IOC’s policies will shift closer to President Trump’s.

But nonetheless, what effect will Trump’s orders have on the Olympics? No candidate for the IOC presidency has campaigned on an iron-clad ban on transgender athletes. The LA Games organisers aren’t reliant on US Federal funding in the first place, so Trump doesn’t have his favourite negotiating tactic available. However, some kind of economic sanctions against the IOC and the Games would be within his contemplation.

Unless the US congress passes laws overriding Trump’s orders on transgender sport, the grim future for US transgender athletes seems clear.

The main production line of US Olympians is through the US College system. It took all of two days for the NCAA to amend its rules, to ban transgender athletes competing outside their biological gender in NCAA competitions, after Trump signed his Executive Order. So, no more Lia Thomas-like furores.

The most frightening prospect is that Homeland Security will round up international transgender athletes coming into America, asserting fraudulent conduct. Kind of like lots of Novak Djokovics coming to Australia all at once, only to be locked up in immigration detention.

Such interference with Olympic competition by a host nation has no real precedence in modern times. Canada didn’t permit the entry of Taiwanese athletes for the Montreal 1976 Games for reasons of foreign policy in relation to China. But Trump’s ideas are very different.

The IOC would not award hosting rights to a city in a country that threatened to arrest competitors arriving at the border. Recital E of the Host City Contract Principles signed in 2017 by the IOC, the US Olympic Committee and Games organisers notes with specificity that the IOC has relied on the US government to respect the Olympic charter.

Trump was US president in 2017. The provisions of the Olympic Charter are flatly inconsistent with the concept of arresting any athlete simply for coming to compete.

Sports news, results and expert commentary. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.