Semenya slams IOC chief Coventry over Olympic ban on transgender women

South African Olympic champion Caster Semenya has criticised International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Kirsty Coventry over the organisation’s new eligibility rules banning transgender women from competing in women’s events at the Olympics.

Transgender women athletes are now excluded from women’s categories at the Games after the IOC approved a new eligibility policy on Thursday. The policy aligns with a U.S. executive order on sports ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

Following an executive board meeting, the IOC published a 10-page policy document that also affects female athletes with medical conditions known as differences in sex development (DSD), including Semenya.

Speaking at a press conference after a race in Cape Town, Semenya criticised Coventry over the decision.

“She’s African. I’m sure she understands how we, as Africans from the Global South, feel. You cannot control genetics,” she said.

Ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics, three major sports—athletics, swimming and cycling—had already excluded transgender women who had undergone male puberty.

Semenya, who was assigned female at birth and has naturally higher testosterone levels than the typical female range, previously won a case at the European Court of Human Rights in her long-running legal challenge to athletics regulations, although the rules were not overturned.

IOC President Kirsty Coventry said the issue is sensitive, speaking during an online news conference to explain the new policy.

Coventry said the IOC had moved to establish a clear, unified policy rather than leaving decisions to individual sporting federations, which had previously set their own rules.

“At the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat,” she said. “It is therefore clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category.”

She added that a review on “protecting the female category” was one of her early priorities when she became the first woman to lead the IOC in its 132-year history.

“If the science is clear, show us who decided it, and don’t present it as a lie because it is a lie,” Semenya said, criticising the decision.