World Swimming make groundbreaking move on transgender eligibility

Husain Al-Musallam, president of FINA, gives a speech during the Opening Ceremony for the Budapest 2022 FINA World Championships in Budapest. Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images

Jeremy Wilson

June 20 2022 02:30 AM

World Swimming have agreed seismic changes to the eligibility of transgender women in female sport by ruling that any athlete who has undergone puberty as a male can no longer compete in elite women’s sport.

In a groundbreaking move for Olympic sport which would mean that the American college swimmer Lia Thomas can no longer compete in elite events, world swimming’s new policy states that transgender women must establish that they “have not experienced any part of male puberty”.

FINA, world swimming’s governing body, also announced plans to establish a new ‘open’ category of competition for transgender women that, according to president Husain Al-Musallam, would include “some of our biggest events”.

Women who transitioned to men can still compete in the male category and a working group will report back within six months on how a new open category could work for women who transitioned after puberty.

“It is a policy based on real science,” said Al-Musallam.

“Our athletes must come first. When I say athletes, I mean every single athlete. Of course I understand why transgender athletes would like to compete in a category of their choice. However, I have an obligation to every single one of our athletes.

“Equality is also a key principle for us. This is why we are faced with such a delicate balancing act. We have to protect the right of all our athletes to compete. But we have to project competitive fairness, and also the past records and achievements of the competition.

“It is a policy that we need to introduce to protect the competitive fairness of our event.”

Although the policy could have been passed just by FINA’s executive bureau, endorsement was sought from individual governing bodies at the annual congress ahead of the World Swimming Championships. More than 70 per cent of national governing bodies agreed with the policy against 15.3pc who rejected it, and 13.1pc who abstained.

Individual countries could still implement their own transgender policy for domestic competition, with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) ruling last year that individual sports must establish frameworks which are relevant to their own sport.

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The International Cycling Union (UCI) announced its new policy on Thursday, but did decide to continue to allow transgender women to compete even if they have gone through puberty provided that their testosterone has been suppressed to below 2.5nmol per litre for at least two years.

That would potentially mean that the Welsh cyclist Emily Bridges could still compete in women’s events at the Paris Games in 2024.

Cycling’s decision has faced an immediate backlash from campaigners, who believe that vital physical advantages remain after puberty even if testosterone has been suppressed.

This argument was endorsed by the scientists who have been working on swimming’s policy since January and reported ongoing differences from the onset of puberty, including larger and stronger muscles, larger airways and lungs, greater oxygen capacity, larger bones, longer arms and legs as well as bigger hands and feet

Brent Nowicki, FINA’s executive director, is confident that the policy will withstand legal challenges in being “reasonable and proportionate”.

In announcing the policy, he said that “male to female transgender athletes, whose legal gender is female, may only compete in FINA competition and set world records in the female category, if they can establish that they have not experienced any part of male puberty”.

He added that athletes would have to show that they suppressed male puberty “beginning from tanner stage 12 or before the age of 12, whichever is later, and that they have since maintained their circulating testosterone below the levels of 2.5 nmol/L”.

Nowicki said that FINA had recognised the need to promote inclusion and balanced the importance of competitive fairness.

“FINA consulted widely and has a team of leading experts in the fields of science, medicine and the law to closely examine these issues,” added Nowicki.