REPEAT POD: Female-only Women's Sport: The IOC Announces New Policy On the Protection of Women's Sport

REPEAT POD: Female-only Women's Sport: The IOC Announces New Policy On the Protection of Women's Sport

From The Real Science of Sport Podcast by Professor Ross Tucker and Mike Finch

March 29, 2026 · 50 min

About this episode

The episode discusses the IOC's new policy on women's sport, emphasizing the protection of female-only categories.

THIS IS A REPUBLICATION OF THE SAME PODCAST AS THURSDAY 26 MARCH ON THE IOC FEMALE SPORT POLICY With apologies for confusion, after we published our most recent podcast on the IOC's new policy for women's sport, we realized the original file had an issue with the syncing of the two audio streams. That was fixed on the day, but the glitch has continued to affect some listeners, and so we are just republishing it here, so that we can be sure that the issue is resolved for what we think is an important podcast, not one we want to be unlistenable because of that problem. Thanks for listening! Show notes The International Olympic Committee, under its new President Kirsty Coventry, has announced new guidelines for eligibility in women's sport. The central decision is clear: the boundaries around women's sport will be protected, with no males — whether they identify as transgender or are athletes with specified differences of sex development (DSDs) — eligible to compete in the women's category. Women's sport is now female only. This is a strong, unified position. The policy mandates the eligibility requirement across all Member Federations, establishing a central global standard that…

People in this episode

Hosts: Professor Ross Tucker, Mike Finch

Topics covered

  • women's sport
  • IOC policy
  • transgender athletes
  • eligibility guidelines
  • sports governance

Keywords

  • IOC
  • women's sport
  • transgender
  • eligibility
  • sports policy
  • Kirsty Coventry
  • DSDs

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: International Olympic Committee, IOC

More episodes of The Real Science of Sport Podcast

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The Real Science of Sport Podcast podcast page.