The Patriot Post® · Olympic-Level Common Sense

There’s good news for all female Olympic athletes: they won’t have to worry about competing against males in the upcoming 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Kirsty Coventry, the International Olympic Committee’s first woman president in its 132-year history and a two-time Olympic gold medalist in her own right, announced the new policy.

“The scientific evidence is very clear: male chromosomes give performance advantage in sports that rely on strength, power, or endurance,” Coventry stated. “At the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat, so it’s absolutely clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category. In addition, in some sports, it would simply not be safe.”

The new policy barring males from competing in women’s events will be based on scientific evidence. All athletes will be tested for the presence of the SRY gene, which indicates male sex. Athletes with the SRY gene will be banned from competing in women’s events. However, they would be free to compete in men’s events if they otherwise qualify.

But that’s the rub for the vast majority of “transgender”-identifying male athletes. By competing in accordance with their biological sex and not their self-expressed gender identity, they are unlikely to beat out the top male athletes in the various events. In other words, their gender-bending cheating game has now been rendered impotent.

It took over a decade and a female president for the IOC to finally come down on the side of scientific reality and common sense. Protecting women’s sports meant that the IOC had to do what so many on the Left have steadfastly refused to do — simply define what a woman is.

As noted above, all Olympic athletes will be subject to a once-in-a-lifetime genetic test for the presence of the SRY gene, which cannot be removed from a person’s genetic makeup. If an athlete has the SRY gene, he has it for life. No amount of cosmetic surgeries or hormone therapy will change his fundamental biological genetic makeup. Furthermore, the genetic test is relatively non-intrusive, as it only requires a saliva or blood sample from the athlete.

The IOC’s announcement was widely praised by leading women’s sports advocates.

Former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines, who has boldly and admirably fought to protect women’s sports and spaces from the intrusion of men identifying as women, responded to Leftmedia outlets’ disingenuous framing of the IOC’s decision by stating, “‘Trans women’ haven’t been banned from women’s sports. Men have. Hope this helps!”

“This is huge. Well done IOC,” posted former U.S. women’s national artistic gymnastics team member and XX-XY Athletics founder Jennifer Sey.

NCAA athletes Kim Jones and Marshi Smith, cofounders of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, welcomed the news as well, saying, “We are elated by the announcement from the International Olympic Committee to strengthen protections for the women’s category and ensure a level playing field for female athletes. A genuine female category at all levels of sport is essential for fairness and for the continued participation of women and girls. When athletes compete on equal terms, it builds trust and inspires the next generation.”

The two then called on the NCAA to follow suit, noting, “This marks a return of female sport to elite female athletes in Olympic competition and reaffirms the importance of fairness, safety, and equal opportunity worldwide.”

Even liberal longtime sports commentator Bob Costas expressed his support for the IOC’s new policy. “Common sense is not transphobic,” he said. “This policy is common sense.” That’s not all — he continued:

There is a reason why no trans man who was once a woman and has become a man has ever competed successfully with men in the Olympics.

If Caitlin Clark could play in the NBA, everybody would applaud it; that’d be an incredible thing. But if the last guy on the bench of an NBA team went to the WNBA and started averaging forty points a game, everyone would know that is BS.

However, as Gaines’s response indicated, the radicals in the Leftmedia sought to disingenuously frame the IOC’s new policy as a ban on “transgender women” athletes’ opportunity to compete. The Associated Press also sought to blame the IOC’s decision on President Donald Trump’s executive order “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” issued in February 2025, to frame it as a political issue rather than a fundamental fairness issue.

Coventry rebuffed the claim. “This was a priority for me way before President Trump came into his second term,” she insisted. “There’s not been any pressure [on] us to deliver anything from anybody outside of the Olympic Movement.”

The White House embraced the AP’s narrative, which is likely partially true, that Trump’s executive order was responsible for the IOC’s new policy. Still, the fact of the matter is that the controversy during the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris was likely the biggest instigator.

Recall the kerfuffle surrounding Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who won the women’s gold medal. Khelif, who clearly displayed masculine physical characteristics and strength and had been banned by the International Boxing Association from competing in women’s events in 2023, was given the green light by the IOC.

Debate raged and continues to over Khelif’s sexual makeup. The fact that the IOC did not have a definitive standard by which to determine an athlete’s sex was a massive problem that would have only continued to be exploited.

Now, with the new scientifically definitive standards, any questions of an athlete’s sex will be put to bed. Khelif plans to take the gene test, which should end the debate.

The world can finally look forward to the upcoming Olympic Games without the specter of gender-bending athletes diminishing competition.