World Athletics has banned transgender women from competing in elite female competitions if they have gone through male puberty, the sport’s governing body said Thursday.
Organization president Sebastian Coe said at a news conference that the decision by the World Athletics Council to exclude transgender women was based “on the overarching need to protect the female category.”
Coe added that World Athletics would form a task force to study transgender inclusion that would be chaired by a transgender athlete.
Also on Thursday, World Athletics voted to end its eight-year doping ban for the Russian Athletics Federation, but the country’s athletes, and those of Belarus, will remain excluded from international competition because of an ongoing separate ban over the invasion of Ukraine.
The World Athletics Council kept its ban on Russian athletes in international events in place “for the foreseeable future” — a move that goes against the International Olympic Committee’s efforts to find a way for Russian athletes to compete as neutrals in upcoming events.
The council also voted to tighten restrictions on athletes with differences in sex development, cutting the maximum amount of plasma testosterone for athletes in half to 2.5 nanomoles per liter.
The tighter testosterone rules will…
