Olympics
Sports leaders reach consensus on new gender policy – IOC
Global sports leaders have reached consensus on a new set of eligibility criteria for transgender athletes, with the new policy expected to be announced within the first half of this year, the International Olympic Committee said on Saturday.
It would be the first uniform policy adopted by the IOC and international sports federations, applying to major events in dozens of sports, including the Games and world championships. Currently, federations have their own rules which can vary.
Details of the new policy are unclear but it is expected to severely restrict the participation of transgender athletes who compete in women’s categories if they have undergone full male puberty before any subsequent medical transition.
The IOC, under its first female president Kirsty Coventry, took the lead in June, opting for a uniform approach.
“Protecting the female category is one of the key reforms she wants to bring in,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams told a press conference at the Milan-Cortina Winter Games on Saturday.
“I would say it is going to happen shortly, within the next few months.”
“It has been out to consultation phase and we had the ‘pause and reflect’ (period) on it,” Adams said. “Generally speaking there is consensus within the sporting movement. I think you will have a new policy in the first half of this year. Don’t hold me to it, but that is roughly the timescale.”
In September, Coventry the ‘Protection of the Female Category’ working group, made up of experts as well as representatives of international federations, to look into how best to protect the female category in sports.
Before Coventry’s decision, the IOC had long baulked at any universal rule on transgender participation for the Games, instructing international federations in 2021 to come up with their own guidelines. Under current rules, still in force, transgender athletes are eligible to take part in the Olympics once cleared by their respective federations.
Only a handful of openly transgender athletes have taken part in the Games. New Zealand’s Laurel Hubbard became the first openly transgender athlete to compete in a different gender category to that assigned at birth when the weightlifter took part in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
Currently, for example, World Aquatics allows transgender athletes who have transitioned before the age of 12, to compete. World Rugby bans all transgender athletes from elite-level competitions.
U.S. President Donald Trump has banned transgender athletes from competing in school, college and pro events in the female category in the United States, as Los Angeles prepares to host the 2028 summer Olympics.
Trump, who signed the “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” order in February, has said he would not allow transgender athletes to compete at the LA Games.
-Reuters
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Nigeria may have no snow, but the country still made its presence felt as the Winter Olympics opened in Milano-Cortina, with Africa recording its strongest showing at the Games in years.
A total of 15 African athletes are taking part in this edition of the Winter Games, a significant increase from the six athletes representing five African countries at the Beijing 2022 WinterOlympics. The expanded participation highlights the continent’s growing footprint in winter sports traditionally dominated by nations from colder climates.
Nigeria is among the African nations represented, fielding a single athlete, as do Eritrea, Benin Republic, and Guinea-Bissau. Four other African countries, Morocco, South Africa, Madagascar, and Kenya are each represented by two athletes.
Most of the African competitors will contest events in alpine skiing, while others are entered in cross-country skiing, freestyle skiing, and skeleton, reflecting a broader spread across winter disciplines.
Nigeria’s sole representative, Samuel Uduigowme Ikpefan, will compete in cross-country skiing, carrying the nation’s flag in a competition far removed from its tropical climate.
Africa’s increased participation at Milano-Cortina underscores the continent’s determination to expand beyond its traditional sporting boundaries, even in environments where snow and ice are more symbolic than familiar.
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Organisers of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics on Tuesday named six stadiums across the United States set to host matches in the men’s and women’s Olympic soccer tournaments, expanding the competition footprint well beyond Southern California.
LA28 said group stage and knockout games will be played in New York, Columbus, Nashville, St. Louis, San Jose and San Diego.
Venues range from an under-construction New York City Football Club stadium due to be completed in 2027 to established Major League Soccer grounds in Ohio, Tennessee, Missouri and Northern California.
Final-stage matches, including the men’s and women’s gold medal games, have already been confirmed for the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. The men’s final is scheduled for July 28, 2028, followed by the women’s final on July 29, 2028, organisers said.
LA28 said it designed the tournament schedule to stage matches concurrently from the East Coast to the West Coast in an effort to limit travel and support athlete welfare while offering fans a more geographically inclusive Games experience.
The organisers also highlighted a milestone in Olympic football, saying that for the first time more women’s teams (16) than men’s teams (12) will compete.
LA28 said it aims to set a benchmark for the first Olympics in which all team sports will feature at least as many women’s teams as men’s.
A full match schedule for both tournaments, including dates and locations for every game, will be announced before tickets go on sale in April, LA28 said.
-Reuters
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- Summary
- *IOC members raise concerns over LA 2028 visa process
- *LA 2028 ticket prices 17% higher than Paris 2024
- *LA Games lack federal funding, rely on sponsorships and tickets
The issues of entry visas and inflated ticket prices for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics dominated a progress report delivered by the American organisers to the International Olympic Committee on Tuesday.
Several IOC members, including International Equestrian Federation chief Ingmar De Vos, raised the issue of entry visas for hundreds of thousands of athletes, their families, officials, media and fans to the U.S., asking LA Games organisers whether the process could be simplified.
Dagmawit Girmay Berhane, an IOC member from Ethiopia, said organisers should make sure that Olympic qualifying tournaments, held in the United States over the next two years, also allowed access to all eligible athletes.
“We have worked very closely with the (U.S.) State Department to design a visa system to allow athletes… to have access to a visa system designed especially for them,” Gene Sykes, chairman of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, said.
He added that there was ongoing close cooperation with U.S. authorities to make the process as easy as possible.
This is not the first time IOC members raised visa issues with the Games organisers, with the White House having already set up a task force to handle visas.
Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump banned citizens of several countries from travelling to the U.S.
Olympic Games can attract hundreds of thousands of visitors from across the world for the 16-day event, with more than 200 countries taking part and over 10,500 athletes competing.
Sykes said this year’s soccer World Cup would act as a trial run for visas, albeit on a smaller scale, with only 48 nations taking part in that tournament.
“The FIFA World Cup will also be happening this summer so this entire process of welcoming visitors to the United States… is getting something of a trial run,” Sykes said.
TICKET PRICES
IOC members also highlighted LA Games ticket prices, saying they were considerably more expensive than those for the Paris 2024 Olympics.
“When you privately pay for the Games, we have only two revenue streams: sponsorships and tickets. Our ticket prices on average are 17% higher than Paris,” LA Games chief Casey Wasserman told the IOC session.
“To be fair the economic opportunity and the four-year difference (from Paris) could have allowed us to go a lot higher than that. So I understand some of the tickets are expensive,” Wasserman said.
The LA Games financial model does not have any federal contribution, unlike most Olympics held in other countries, meaning organisers must maximise revenues.
Wasserman, who apologised last week for communicating with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell more than 20 years ago, after the publication of a series of personal emails between the two, was spared any questions on that issue.
New files related to late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Maxwell’s former boyfriend, published by the U.S. Justice Department on Friday, included flirtatious email exchanges between Wasserman, who was married at the time, and Maxwell dating from 2003.
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