It has taken too long but finally female athletes can take heart.
The International Olympic Committee is getting some spine and within months the women’s sport category will be for women.
That’s biological women. Gender ideology is to be usurped by biological reality.
The message about the fairness of the female competition has been heard clearly in the corridors of power at the headquarters of the IOC at Chateau du Vidy, Lausanne. Here the seven candidates vying to replace Thomas Bach as president of the IOC have hardened their public stances on the issue.
Even candidate Kirsty Coventry, who was on the IOC executive board when the farce of the Paris Olympic boxing saw two XY boxers claim gold medals, has called for the IOC to support the federations which have acted decisively – athletics, swimming are the big two – and implement a blanket policy across the board to support women’s sport.
Instead of having the various sports federations grappling with legal threats and human rights challenges, the order will come from the top: transgender athletes and any other biological males with XY chromosomes won’t be allowed in the women’s category.
“So that every international sports federation is on the same page,’’ Coventry said.
Sebastian Coe, another presidential candidate, has been at the forefront of this battle, ever since the court battles of XY distance runner Caster Semenya and the vivid example of having three athletes with differences of sexual development on the podium of the women’s 800m at the Rio Olympics.
At World Athletics, which he now leads, there are rules to stop XY and trans athletes from competing at senior competitions. On Thursday he told the 110 IOC members who will decide the next president in a vote in Greece on March 20 that: “We will maintain a laser-like focus on sporting excellence, we will protect and promote the integrity of women’s sport, and we will strengthen anti-doping systems – all of which I have done, together with my council, at World Athletics.”
All of the other presidential candidates, in particular the head of the Ski Federation Johan Eliasch, have been forceful in wanting to keep women’s sport for women.
This leadership has seemed the sensible one all along given that the women’s category was established as “protected” in the first place to allow XX women who don’t have the strength and power advantages of male hormones to be able to compete on a level playing field. For if the women’s space is not protected, why then have the category in the first place?
All of this played out at the Tokyo Olympics where Laurel Hubbard, a New Zealand weightlifter who was a man until aged 35, was allowed to qualify for the Games, taking the berth of Nauruan teenager Roviel Detenamo. As Hubbard’s competitors around the world and some sports officials protested without impact, the New Zealander was strongly supported by then New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern.
Richard Budgett, the then IOC medical director, insisted to the world’s press: “everybody accepts trans women are women’’. Except that the scientific advice given to his medical commission was anything but. Scientists had warned that biological male athletes who had gone through puberty retained physiological advantages that no medicalisation could overcome.
Fast forward to the Paris Olympics and we had Bach’s blithe and arrogant assumption that womanhood could be defined by a passport.
That led to a situation where boxers with XY chromosomes – with up to 2½ times more power, as well as lower fat ratios allowing for height and limb reach advantages – were able to demolish opponent after opponent in the entire competition without even losing a round.
Now that Thomas Bach is rapidly losing his grip on the IOC membership, female athletes can dare to hope that this upside-down period – in which they have had their competitions distorted and their medals taken away by the cowardly enabling of male advantage – is finally at an end.
Presidential hopefuls unite to protect women at Games
The awarding of the Olympics to Brisbane for 2032 would not have happened under the next president replacing Thomas Bach, as the seven candidates standing to head the International Olympic Committee all spoke about “empowering” the members and a commitment to end the ambiguity around transgender and biological men competing in the women’s category.
Bach has run the IOC with an iron fist for 12 years, concentrating the power base within an inner circle of executive board members, which has frustrated and annoyed the wider IOC membership of 110 people, including business leaders or athletes with much to offer.
Brisbane was awarded the 2032 Games in July 2021, with the members presented with the bid approved by the executive board as a fait accompli, after it had been driven by the then IOC vice-president and now honorary member John Coates.
Tapping into that disquiet about the manner of recent host city elections has been Sebastian Coe, who on paper is the most experienced candidate as Olympic champion, world record holder, a man so decorated in Britain that they have run out of honours with which to endow him, and who got the London 2012 bid on track, was then chairman of those most successful Olympic Games and now runs the biggest Olympic sport, World Athletics. Peppered through his messaging is the “empowerment” of IOC members.
On Thursday Lord Coe, 68, told the members they had brains the size of planets, and a purpose and passion that outpaces anyone.
“Imagine if we put all of that to work, that passion, that purpose,” he said. “Not just use this room as a rubber stamp. Not just meet together to nod through work done elsewhere.”
The current favourite in the presidential race, Spain’s Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr, had a similar message for the members.
“The election of Moscow in 1980 and Los Angeles in 1984 was an incredible example of the IOC’s bold leadership and commitment to unifying the world during the Cold War,” he said.
“Beijing 2008 brought the Games to the world’s most populous nation, and Rio 2016 to South America for the first time. Each of these decisions, and many others throughout our history, required leadership and courage from a committed, daring, and empowered membership. We need that level of empowerment back. We need to be daring, again.”
Each of the seven candidates gave speech to more than 100 IOC members who converged on Lausanne on Thursday for the one-day special session.
But so secretive was the process, each candidate had just 15 minutes to convey how they would run the IOC once Thomas Bach steps down in June, and they had to hand over their phones and smart watches and wait in a separate room while their rivals spoke. No questions were allowed.
The candidates then had a strict 10-minute window to speak to the world’s media, which was restricted to 30 journalists only.
It is unclear why the members were flown into the Olympic headquarters and were then not able to scrutinise the candidates. The vote won’t be held for another two months, which technically allows for plenty of horse trading and deals over the next few weeks.
The candidates have been highly critical of this opaque presidential process, introduced under Bach’s increasingly erratic presidency, and have promised immediate change.
Samaranch Jr even gave a pledge that the media was “an ally, not an enemy”.
Prince Feisal al-Hussein of Jordan, 61, a man known for his consensus approach, said pointedly: “The world has right to know who is running and what they stand for; at end the day the world should know who its leaders are, and have an opportunity to meet them and what they stand for.”
When asked about the hosting of future Olympic Games, Prince Feisal said: “I would have more flexibility in the rules than they exist today, I am consensus-based leader, and I will make sure the rest of members also happy with those changes.”
So what have we learned from the brief interactions that the candidates have been given?
David Lappartient, 51, the French head of the International Cycling Union, did not shy away from addressing the current tense relationship between the IOC and the US, which has been sparked by the World Anti Doping Agency’s refusal to further investigate the spate of Chinese drug positives that emerged before the Tokyo Olympics.
Lappartient, who also sits on the WADA board, said if elected he would remind US President Donald Trump “that our autonomy is in fact non-negotiable ... I don’t think we should leave the door open to think that our autonomy could be negotiated”.
The heavyweight candidates have all called to protect women’s sport, bringing an end to the chaos of defining a woman that enveloped the Paris Olympics and Paralympics.
Bach’s refusal to protect biological women allowed two boxers with XY chromosomes to win Olympic gold medals in boxing, and a biological male transgender runner was able to compete in the blind 400m.
Zimbabwe’s Kirsty Coventry, the only candidate from Africa, and with a six-month-old baby, has the fierce backing of Bach to become the organisation’s first female leader and has read the room on the issue.
The 41-year-old has now adopted the stance first led by Lord Coe to protect the women’s category for biological women.
Coventry said that if elected president she will bring together all of the international federations to have a singular policy to protect women’s sport.
“I am very optimistic to bring everyone together, so that every federation is on the same page and protect women’s sport into the future,’’ she said.
Samaranch Jr is well aware of the charges of nepotism – his father led the IOC during some of its most turbulent years of the Salt Lake City bribery scandal – that may impact his campaign. He noted that his father left the IOC 24 years ago and that he was proud of his last name and its Olympic legacy.
“The Olympic Movement he entered almost 60 years ago bears little resemblance to what we face today,’’ he said.
“Our modern challenges demand far more complex solutions, which depend on experience and wisdom rather than on one’s last name.”
Johan Eliasch, the 63-year-old International Ski Federation president who is big on environmental protections and Japan’s Morinari Watanabe, 65, the president of International Gymnastics, who has presented revolutionary ideas to even change the name of the Olympics, are considered outsiders in the race.
The vote, will be held in Greece on March 18-21.
It will have an immediate impact on the Brisbane Olympics in many areas, including deciding the direction of the Olympics, including future marketing plans, adopting digital technology, whether athletes will be paid, the inclusion of Russia, and the sports that will be on the Brisbane program.
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