By THE ALASKA STORY
March 26, 2026 – The International Olympic Committee on Thursday approved a new policy limiting women’s Olympic competition to biological females. For athletes concerned with of the most significant shifts in international sports eligibility rules in years — and aligning with policies already debated and implemented in Alaska.
Under the new policy, announced March 26 by IOC President Kirsty Coventry, eligibility for the female category at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games and future IOC events will be restricted to biological females. The rule is not retroactive and will not affect past Olympic results.
Rep. Jamie Allard celebrated the decision, saying, “When women stand up and fight for fairness, we win. This decision recognizes what female athletes have always known: women deserve a category where their hard work, dedication, and sacrifice will not be undermined by biological males looking for an advantage.” Allard was a competitive Junior Olympics track and field athlete in her youth and has championed protections for female athletes.
The IOC said the change is intended to “protect fairness, safety, and integrity in the female category,” and will create a uniform standard across Olympic sports, replacing the IOC’s 2021 framework that allowed sport-by-sport decisions and prioritized inclusion.
Central to the new policy is a one-time screening for the SRY gene, a genetic marker located on the Y chromosome associated with male sex development. Testing may be conducted using saliva, cheek swab, or blood samples. Athletes who test SRY-positive will be ineligible to compete in women’s Olympic events.
IOC officials described the rule as “evidence-based and expert-informed,” stating that allowing biological males to compete in women’s categories undermines fairness and equal opportunity for female athletes. The organization also encouraged international sports federations to align their eligibility rules with the new standard.
The move follows roughly 18 months of review and consultation with medical experts and sports governing bodies. It also reflects a broader global shift, with several federations, including track and field, already adopting biology-based eligibility criteria.
While the policy protects women’s sports by addressing physiological advantages retained after male puberty, such as differences in muscle mass, bone density, and cardiovascular capacity, LGBTQ advocacy groups oppose the decision.
The Olympic-level impact in Alaska is expected to be limited, as the state produces relatively few Olympic athletes, but the policy mirrors debates that have already played out locally.
Alaska has been part of the national conversation over transgender participation in girls’ athletics. In Anchorage, Haines, and other communities, school districts had allowed boys to compete against girls in sports such as track and field, and have allowed them to use girls’ locker rooms.
In 2023 and 2024, state-level actions and Alaska School Activities Association policies limited participation on girls’ teams in certain competitive and contact sports to students assigned female at birth. The state school board also adopted the sideboards to protect girls. Those rules sparked significant public debate and legal scrutiny but ultimately placed Alaska among states adopting biology-based eligibility standards.
The IOC’s decision effectively brings Olympic policy closer to those already used in Alaska high school athletics, creating greater consistency between local and international competition frameworks.
No Alaska athletes are currently known to be directly affected by the new Olympic rule. However, the decision is likely to influence future policy discussions and legal challenges from organizations such as GLAAD and the ACLU in school athletics, collegiate sports, and state governing bodies, particularly as the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics approach.
The IOC said additional implementation guidance will be released ahead of the Los Angeles Games, including privacy safeguards, testing protocols, and coordination with international federations.
The change represents a major departure from the IOC’s previous emphasis on so-called “inclusion” and signals a broader shift toward sex-based categories in elite sport.
11 thoughts on “IOC decides men may not compete in women’s competitions in the Olympics”
Good try men. Better luck next time. You are not woman enough to be convincing.
You need to get weaker to get closer matching the weakness level of the weaker sex.
Correct. Enough said.
I wonder if Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson would have the same answer today as she had during her confirmation hearing, granted that she’s not a biologist…but expected to make judgments.
Time for all female athletes to celebrate the last stamp needed to enhance the law of fair games, participation and results involving this gender decision which ensures their voices have been heard and the games will be restructured now for the benefit of this decision for present and future games.
It’s the right move.
I commend the author of this article for not using the ridiculous phony term, “biological men.” All men are biological men; therefore, the adjective, biological, is unnecessary and redundant. Moreover, using that phony term implies there is more than one type of men, a phony construct and a lie.
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As to intersex people, they are either male of female with a genetic abnormality, most often chromosomal. No human has ever been able to reproduce hermaphroditically (that is, with themself).
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As to transgender, that is simply a form a homosexuality taken to the extreme of changing one’s phenotype with drugs, hormones, surgery and fashion. Our constitution protects anyone’s right to engage in this behavior and we should respect their rights accordingly. However, the constitution does not require us to agree their sex is actually changed.
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The terms sex and gender are synonymous.
By the way, the phony terms, “assigned male at birth” or “assigned female at birth” are dirty lies. The truth is, the sex of all living organisms is created at conception. For our culture to survive, we must stop letting deceived people continue in perverting our language with false terms to promote lies.
I’m glad they finally spoke up(yet too late) after last summer Olympics where that boxer “bashed the brains” of the female boxer…something had to change.. just how many more women could get hurt or be disabled for life.
This may surprise you, but I wholeheartedly agree with this decision. The point of athletic competition is to find the best performer within a cohort with similar abilities. That’s why kid’s sports are segmented by age, why we have both amateur and professional sports categories, and why we separate male and female competition. Now, if a guy wants to transition to female, he/she/they can transition a lot of things, but size, muscle mass, height, and other characteristics that improve athletic abilities are generally not amongst them. Allowing a genetically male individual to compete against women is just basically unfair in most sports.
One good solution to all of this is to create “open” categories for competition, where anyone who thinks they can cut the mustard can compete against each other.
So, you see, not all of us who are left of center fall under the “radical, leftist, extremist” label so often pinned to us. The world is more complicated than that, even if Fox and CNN. etc. don’t want you to believe it.
Oh, and guys, unless you’ve gone under the knife – yes, that way – you can stay out of the women’s changing rooms as well.
Under the knife for a full frontal lobotomy should be the only prerequisite for entering women’s space.
WHAT????? Common sense isn’t completely dead?