South African Caster Semenya, two-time Olympic champion in the 800 meters, declared this Sunday (29) that the reintroduction by the IOC (International Olympic Committee) of femininity tests for the Los Angeles-2028 Olympic Games is “a lack of respect for women”.
The hyperandrogenic former athlete also expressed her disappointment that the measure was taken under the leadership of the new IOC president, former Zimbabwean swimmer Kirsty Coventry, the first woman to hold the position.
“For me personally, the fact that she is a woman who comes from Africa, knowing how African women or women from the Global South are affected by this, of course it causes pain,” Semenya said during a press conference in Cape Town on the sidelines of a sports competition.
The IOC announced on Thursday (26) the reestablishment of genetic femininity tests from the 2028 Games in Los Angeles, excluding transgender athletes and a large number of intersex athletes from women’s sports.
Chromosomal tests until 1996
Admission to women’s Olympic competitions “is now reserved for people of female biological sex” who do not carry the SRY gene, the IOC explained in a statement.
The committee already resorted to chromosomal femininity tests between 1968 and the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, before abandoning them in 1999 under pressure from the scientific community, which questioned their relevance, and from its own athletes’ commission.
“It ended in failure. That’s why it was abandoned,” Semenya recalled on Sunday. “As a woman, why should I be subjected to a test to prove that I am?” she asked.
“It’s as if we now have to prove that we, women, deserve to participate in sport. It’s a lack of respect for women,” he insisted.
Semenya has become the symbol of the struggle of hyperandrogenic athletes, a battle to assert their rights that she has been fighting since her first world title in the 800 m in 2009, first on the athletics track and then in the courts.
Trump against transgender athletes
The reinstatement of femininity tests eliminates the main focus of potential conflict with US President Donald Trump, host of the next Summer Games.
Shortly after returning to the White House in 2025, Trump decreed a ban on the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports.
Although Washington must applaud this move by the IOC, in recent months warnings against the return of genetic testing to sport have multiplied, coming from scientists, United Nations rapporteurs, jurists and human rights organizations.
French Sports Minister Marina Ferrari also opposed the reintroduction of these tests, a move she classified as a “setback”.
Femininity tests were already introduced last year in athletics, skiing and boxing, a sport that brought this issue to the surface at the Paris-24 Games, with the gold medals of Algerian Imane Khelif and Taiwanese Lin Yu-ting, accused by several personalities, such as Trump or the creator of “Harry Potter”, JK Rowling, of being transgender women.
Khelif recently admitted that he carries the SRY gene, an indicator of masculinity, in a “natural” way, that he underwent hormonal treatment to reduce his testosterone level and that he is not opposed to gender tests, aiming to participate in Los Angeles-28.
