Coventry wants consensus among sports on protecting womens category

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FILE PHOTO: Newly elected President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Kirsty Coventry attends her first Executive Board meeting at the Olympic House in Lausanne, Switzerland, June 25, 2025. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo

TOKYO - International Olympic Committee chief Kirsty Coventry says she is hoping for consensus among sports about protecting the female category, with fairness of competition the foremost consideration.

Coventry said after her election as leader of the Olympic movement in June that the IOC would spearhead discussions on gender eligibility criteria in sports, four years after the body urged federations to handle the issue independently.

Earlier this month, the IOC set up a Protection of the Female Category Working Group, including experts and representatives of international sports federations, to discuss the issue.

What I would like for the IOC to do is to bring everyone together to try and find a consensus amongst all of us that we can all get behind and that we can implement, the IOC President told reporters in Tokyo on Saturday.

And above anything and everything else, its fair and protects the female category. So they met last week, and Im looking forward to debriefing with them in the next few weeks.

The IOCs 2021 guidelines on Fairness, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination suggested that federations prioritised the inclusion of gender non-conforming athletes in the category of their choice, while making no presumptions of unfair advantage.

Despite this, several Olympic sports have over the last few years banned anyone who has