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NEW YORK – The leadership of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) addressed the topic of mandatory gender testing to protect women’s sports from biologically male trans athletes during a press conference at its media summit on Tuesday.
USOPC President Sarah Hirshland declined to answer whether she would personally support mandatory genetic testing to protect the women’s categories when asked by Pakinomist Digital after President Donald Trump suggested at a news conference in August that there would be a “very strong form” of gender testing to keep biological males out of women’s competitions at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
Hirshland said she would support any decisions made by the world governing bodies and individual US governing bodies for their respective sports.
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“We’re here to be supportive and helpful,” Hirshland said. “However, ultimately the definition of eligibility for competitions must be done at the individual sport level, whether it is global or national.”
In July, however, the USOPC updated its athlete safety policy to indicate compliance with Trump’s “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order, and US governing bodies in turn changed their trans athlete participation policies to comply with the USOPC’s new guidance.
No single US governing body currently uses gender testing to protect the female category. World Athletics and World Boxing are the two major world governing bodies that use gender testing.
USOPC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Regarding regular gender testing for women’s sport, Jonathan Finnoff said: “The expectation is that this is where world sport, international sport, will go.”
Finnoff added, “And fortunately, the executive order designed to protect women’s sports in the United States is very much in line with the trend internationally.”
Finnoff also said that the SRY gene tests used by World Athletics and World Boxing are “not common” in the United States, but suggested that the USOPC is currently exploring the possibility of applying sex-testing options to its own teams, and that he expects other world governing bodies to “follow suit.”
“It’s not necessarily very common to get this specific test in the United States, and so our goal with that was to help identify labs and opportunities for the athletes to be able to get that test, and based on that experience to know that some other international federations are likely to follow suit,” Finnoff said.
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A presentation on one World Athletics panel in Tokyo in September revealed that 50 to 60 athletes with male biological advantages have been finalists in the female category at global and continental championships since 2000.
The panel was chaired by the head of the World Athletics Health and Science Department, Dr. Stéphane Bermon, who said gender tests were necessary due to an “over-representation” of DSD athletes (differences in gender development) among finalists, per more reports.
In October last year United Nations said nearly 900 biological women have fallen short of the podium because they were beaten by trans athletes.
The findings were compiled by Reem Alsalem, UN Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and entitled “Violence against women and girls in sport.”
The report said more than 600 athletes did not medal in more than 400 competitions in 29 sports, totaling more than 890 medals, according to information obtained as of March 30.
“The replacement of the female sports category with a mixed-gender category has resulted in an increasing number of female athletes losing opportunities, including medals, when competing against men,” the report said.
The new president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Kirsty Coventry, addressed the issue of transgender athletes competing in women’s sports at her first news conference since taking over in June, saying there is “overwhelming support” from IOC members to protect the female category.
“We understand that there will be differences depending on the sport … but it was very clear from members that we need to protect the women’s category, first and foremost, to ensure fairness,” Coventry said. “But we have to do it with a scientific approach and the involvement of the international federations, which have already done a lot of work in this area.”
The new president added that there is “unanimous” support for agreeing on how to change the policy and suggested the IOC could take inspiration from the World Athletics policy, which restricts biological males from competing in women’s sports if those males have gone through male puberty.
“It was very clear from the membership that the discussion around this needs to be done with medical and scientific research at the center, so we look at the facts and the nuances and the involvement of the international federations that have done so much of this work … to have a seat at the table and share with us because every sport is different,” she said.
President Donald Trump delivers remarks after signing an executive order creating a White House Olympic task force to handle security and other issues related to the 2028 Summer Olympics in LA on August 5, 2025. (Reuters/Jonathan Ernst/TPX Pictures of the Day)
A New York Times/Ipsos poll in January found that the vast majority of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, do not believe that transgender athletes should be allowed to compete in women’s sports.
“Thinking about transgender female athletes — meaning athletes who were male at birth but currently identify as female — do you think they should or should not be allowed to compete in women’s sports?” the survey asked.
Of the 2,128 people who participated, 79% said biological males who identify as female should not be allowed to participate in women’s sports.
