"VAN" (Sports Desk - 30.03.2026) :: The International Olympic Committee’s new policy restricting the women’s category in Olympic Sport to biological females has been strongly criticized by Humans of Sport, an organisation supporting athletes to “remedy injustices” and also strengthen their “access to rights”.
South Africa's two-time Olympic champion Caster Semenya said: “We wrote to the IOC. We delivered our letter. We heard nothing back. When I was asked to be consulted, I made one thing clear: I will not be used as a token voice. Consultation means nothing if you have already decided. It means nothing if you have not sat with our stories, our pain, what our bodies have been put through in the name of sport. If the IOC had truly listened — if President Coventry had done what evidence-based policy demands — this policy would not exist. It does not smell of science. It smells of stigma. It was not born from care for athletes. It was born from political pressure. As a woman from Africa, I had hoped President Coventry would be different. I had hoped she would listen to all of us — not just the powerful, not just the comfortable. She had the chance. She failed us.”
Humans of Sport Executive Director Payoshni Mitra, a prominent athlete rights advocate, and a leading campaigner in the abolition of sex testing policies in women’s sport, said: “We are watching the sport movement bend to the same forces dismantling human rights globally — the Trump administration, the gender critical movement, biological essentialism repackaged as fairness. The IOC President invokes neutrality when it is convenient, goes silent when civil society raises legitimate concerns. But when political pressure mounts ahead of LA2028, action follows. One has to ask: is the sport movement truly as independent as it claims? Neutrality applied selectively is not neutrality — it is a choice.”
Cr-AIPS
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