As Sebastian Coe eyes IOC throne, uncertainty lingers over governing body's future stance on gender eligibility and DSD athletes

No words trumpeted by those in the running to become the International Olympic Committee's next president have cut through quite like one remark made by Sebastian Coe.

"It's a very clear proposition to me — if you do not protect the female category, or if you are in any way ambivalent about it for whatever reason, then it will not end well for women's sport," Coe said late last year.

The president of World Athletics is one of seven candidates wishing to this week be voted in as Thomas Bach's successor at a gathering in Olympia, the home of the ancient Olympic Games, where the IOC's stance on gender eligibility and those with differences in sexual development, more commonly known as DSD athletes, could be set for a radical change.

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The IOC's stance is based on human rights and gives power to the various international federations, such as World Athletics, World Aquatics and the International Weightlifting Federation, to rule on whether certain athletes can compete in the women's category at the Olympics.

That's why Kiwi weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, a transgender woman who had been through male puberty, was allowed to compete in women's weightlifting at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

It's also partly why two boxers, Algerian Imane Khelif and Taiwan's Lin Yu-ting, could fight in the women's category at last year's Paris Olympics. The IOC governed boxing at the Paris Games having seized control of the sport from the Russian-led International Boxing Association, and was therefore in a position to let Khelif and Lin contest the women's category despite claims, albeit unverified, made by the IBA that they had failed gender eligibility tests.

In scenes teeming with both patriotism and hostility, Khelif won gold in the 66-kilogram event and Lin conquered the 57-kilogram competition.

Khelif and Lin were born as females, have always identified as females and have only ever fought in the female category.

Spaniard Juan Antonio Samaranch junior — the son of the IOC president who announced Sydney would host the 2000 Olympics — and Swedish-born Briton Johan Eliasch, the president of the International Ski Federation, have indicated they will divert away from the IOC's stance on gender eligibility and DSD athletes if ushered in as the 10th IOC president.

But no candidate eyeing off Bach's throne has been more forthright in their stance on sport's most delicate topic than Coe, which was to be expected in light of his reign as the boss of World Athletics.

In 2023, Coe ruled that transgender women who've gone through male puberty were banned from competing in top-level athletics.

The British athletics great, a winner of two Olympic gold medals in the 1500 metres in the 1980s, also tightened restrictions on DSD athletes by ruling in 2023 that they must reduce their testosterone levels to below 2.5 nanomoles per litre in order to compete at the highest level.

South Africa's Caster Semenya, the Olympic gold medallist in the 800 metres at London 2012 and Rio 2016, became a 5000-metre runner after World Athletics won a court case in 2019 in a successful push to introduce a limit of five nanomoles per litre in testosterone.

The champion runner moved up in distance because the governing body's rule only applied to events ranging between 400 metres and the mile.

She made a trip to Australia in 2023 to race in the mixed relay at Bathurst's world cross-country championships, where Australia's team beat the fourth-placed South Africans to bronze.

But when World Athletics' stance grew even stricter in 2023, with the testosterone limit halving and the principle of restricted events being banished, Semenya's elite-level career was killed off.

"I come from a sport where that [women's sport] is absolutely sacrosanct," Coe said late last year.

As the furore surrounding Khelif and Lin raged in Paris, comments from an IOC spokesman heightened tensions.

"Federations need to make the rules to make sure that there is fairness, but at the same time with the ability for everyone to take part who wants to. That's a difficult balance," Mark Adams said.

"In the end it's up to the experts for each discipline. They know very well where there is an advantage, and if that is a big advantage then that is clearly not acceptable, but that decision needs to be made at that level."

Coe was asked late last year if he found himself wincing as Khelif and Lin fought in the French capital.

"I was uncomfortable," the 68-year-old said.

"It has to be a clear-cut policy, and it is incumbent on the IOC to create that landscape. I would want to make sure it is clear-cut."

Tennis icon Martina Navratilova, the 18-time singles grand slam champion, was among the loudest critics of the decision to allow Khelif and Lin to compete in the women's category in Paris.

"Thanks for nothing, IOC," Navratilova said. "Shame on you. This is a travesty."

At a press conference in Paris that descended into chaos amid technical errors, language barriers and anger, IBA coaches committee chair Gabriele Martelli said: "When there is an unfair advantage, people could die".

But the tests undertaken by Khelif and Lin, both of which revealed X and Y chromosomes according to the IBA, were never disclosed.

"I would not consider this a real crisis because all this discussion is based on a fake news campaign coming from Russia," Bach told Reuters in Greece last week.

If the gloves of the Russian-led IBA weren't already off, they were when those words filtered through.

In the meantime, the world waits to find out which of the seven candidates to become the next IOC president comes up trumps.

The outcome could trigger a seismic Olympic change, especially if running legend Coe collects another win.