Olympic sport once again finds itself facing one of its most delicate debates, one that combines science, identity, rights and competitive fairness. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is moving toward a possible return of sex verification controls in women’s sport, a practice abandoned more than three decades ago and now resurfacing under a new argument: avoiding human suffering and protecting the women’s category at the elite level.
The proposal, which could be announced in early 2026 and implemented after the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympic Games, represents a profound shift in the current regulatory framework. Driven by IOC President Kirsty Coventry, the initiative would introduce genetic testing for all women seeking to compete in future Games, in a context shaped by media pressure, evolving scientific criteria and the growing fragmentation of rules among international federations.
The return of an abandoned practice
The debate took concrete shape after the most recent Olympic Games, when several high-profile victories reignited questions over eligibility criteria in the women’s category. Cases such as that of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif once again brought to the forefront an issue the Olympic movement has struggled to manage for years without definitive answers. From that point, the IOC established a study commission to review the available scientific evidence.
That commission was chaired by Jane Thornton, the IOC’s new medical director and a former Canadian Olympic rower, who recently presented in Lausanne a report focused on the physical advantages associated with male puberty. According to sources cited by the British press, the conclusions suggest that certain structural and physiological benefits persist even after testosterone suppression, reinforcing the view that current hormonal limits are insufficient to guarantee competitive equality.
A paradigm shift with human impact
The path being considered by the IOC does not emerge in isolation. In 2025, World Athletics had already taken a similar step by requiring a PCR test at the Tokyo World Championships to detect the SRY gene on the Y chromosome, excluding from the women’s category those who did not pass the test. Adopting a comparable criterion at Olympic level would mark the end of the decentralized model in which each international federation defined its own rules under a general framework recommended by the IOC.
Such a shift would also mean definitively abandoning the system based on testosterone reduction, a requirement that in the past forced transgender women and athletes with differences in sex development (DSD) to undergo medical treatments with significant physical and psychological consequences. For many athletes, that process resulted in declining health or withdrawal from elite competition, a reality that has returned to the center of the debate as the IOC seeks to unify criteria in a deeply fragile terrain.
