‘WHO’D have thought that in 2026 we are supposed to be grateful for the headline . . . women sport to be kept for women! Well lucky ol’us!’ Sharron Davies, the feisty biology believer, tweeted on Friday morning.
She was right to lace her gratitude with a touch of irony. However I cannot have been the only person thanking God when I heard the news on Thursday of a sanity breakthrough at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that, we can only pray, will finally see an end to men competing as women in women’s sport. The news that provoked Sharron’s tweet was that Olympic chiefs have finally blocked transgender athletes from all women’s sports after announcing mandatory sex testing under new rules. After years of lobbying and campaigning for biological reality and fairness.
The IOC has finally come to its senses. As the Daily Mail reported, a once-in-a-lifetime SRY gene test will help to ‘protect fairness, safety and integrity in the female category’. It ‘slams the door firmly shut on transgender athletes such as Laurel Hubbard’, forcing those with a ‘Disorder of Sex Development’ to prove that they do not benefit from the anabolic and/or performance-enhancing effects of testosterone.
For years now we have been forced into an officially-driven world of make-believe whereby a man who ‘identifies’ as a woman was allowed to compete and win in female competitive sports – an insanity which culminated, for me anyway, in seeing the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who has high levels of testosterone, punching her female rival so hard that she won the women’s welterweight gold medal at the 2024 Summer Olympics in just 46 seconds.
Here it is to remind you:
There are plenty of other examples. They include swimmer Lia Thomas, cyclist Veronica Ivy, weightlifter Laurel Hubbard and MMA fighter Fallon Fox. By December 2024, 29 trans-athletes had won state, national or international titles in women’s sports.
So the IOC calling a halt to this insanity and injustice – that they succoured by giving in to the aggressive and frankly disturbed trans lobby – was well overdue. In 2015 the IOC updated its policy to remove the requirement for surgery (yet they didn’t have to do this to say they were women), allowing such ‘trans women’ to compete provided they kept their testosterone levels below ten nanomoles per litre (nmol/L) for 12 months.
But for Sebastian Coe and female warriors J K Rowling and Sharron Davies calling for reason and, in Rowling’s case, an end to the bullying, this turnaround might not have happened. It goes to show how a few committed high-profile people can change ‘culture’, and they deserve our admiration for their tenacity and praise for this achievement.
Lord Coe used his position as President of World Athletics and a candidate for the IOC presidency to take a firm stance on transgender participation in elite sports, making clear that he prioritised the ‘integrity’ and protection of the female categories. Under his leadership, world athletics banned transgender women who have gone through male puberty from female world ranking competitions in March 31, 2023.
It’s taken another three years to change the IOC. And it is thanks to the decisive action of the woman who stepped up to the helm. Kirsty Coventry was elected the IOC president over Lord Coe in March last year after making it clear during her campaign that she would protect the female category. Once in office, she wasted little time in setting up a working group to examine the issue and reverse the organisation’s position laid down in its preposterously progressive 2021 Framework on Fairness, Inclusion, and Non-Discrimination.
Let’s hope that she is a strong enough woman to square up to the woke ‘human rights’ backlash that’s begun – eagerly reported by the Guardian of course – replete with human rights jargon and double speak. If you want to get a taste of what she’ll be up against – that she is violating basic human rights – then read this article here (if you can bear it – I hardly could).
What it tells me is that the battle for biological reality as opposed to fantasy identity and trans bullying and madness is not yet over. Far from it. But it’s a great start!
