FINA, the international swimming federation, has barred transgender women from competing in the event that they have passed through male puberty.
The recent policy, announced Sunday by the federation, requires that transgender athletes wanting to compete in women’s competitions have either never passed through male puberty, or that that they had it suppressed on the stage when physical changes begin to look, or before the age of 12, whichever occurred later.
Such athletes may even need to prove to the federation that they’ve constantly suppressed their testosterone levels since that point.
“We now have to guard the rights of our athletes to compete, but we also need to protect competitive fairness at our events, especially the ladies’s category at FINA competitions,” Husain al-Musallam, the president of the federation said in statement.
Lia Thomas, the transgender woman on the University of Pennsylvania’s swim team, has turn into the face of the talk over sports and gender identity. She won the N.C.A.A. championship within the 500-yard women’s freestyle this yr after previously being ranked sixty fifth while competing in the lads’s division. In March, she said she had aspirations to swim on the U.S. Olympic trials.
FINA is a further, open category, al-Musallam added, to enable every athlete “the chance to compete at an elite level.”
FINA Members Federations voted Sunday to adopt the policy, the organization said within the statement, adding that 71.5 percent of members had been in favor of adopting it.
The policy was devised by a working group arrange in November that included athletes, scientists and medical and legal experts, it added.
The brand new policy will go into effect Monday.
This can be a developing story. Check back for updates.
