The French Minister of Sports and the Olympics, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, recalled on Wednesday that the presence of transgender athletes at the Paris Olympics in 2024 would depend on the rules put in place by the international sports federations.
“It’s a difficult and evolving subject in which you have to navigate between two requirements, inclusion and respect for sporting fairness,” she said on the France Info channel when asked about the recent decision of the International Athletics Federation (World Athletics) to exclude transgender people from women’s competitions.
“Not everyone is on that line. Scientific progress will inform the decision of these actors,” she said, while studies on the subject, in particular on the role of testosterone in high-level sports performance, are lacking or are controversial.
Regarding the Paris Olympics, the rule “will depend on each of the international federations, which govern the rules relating to their discipline. There are differences from discipline to discipline,” she said.
In August 2021, in Tokyo, New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard made history by becoming the first openly transgender woman to compete in an Olympic event. At the time, she met the qualification criteria for the Olympics, which required a testosterone level maintained below 10 nmol per liter for at least twelve months.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) gave up at the end of 2021 to establish uniform guidelines as to the criteria for the participation of intersex and transgender athletes, leaving the hand to international federations.
