The campaign to restore fairness has been long and hard. Women like us across the world have been denigrated for calling for fairness in sport. Now we are vindicated.
The IOC have completely changed tack and will now require sex-verification screening for all athletes entering the female category. This measure will not restore the medals lost to males with DSDs but it will ensure we never again see men punching women in the face in the name of the Olympics.
The Countess organised a letter signed by international groups and individual athletes and campaigners like Martina Navratilova, Sharron Davies, and Riley Gaines, which was sent to the IOC in advance of the 2024 games to ask for immediate reinstatement of sex screening, as we knew there were two boxers who were not female in that competition. We also sent a delegation to Paris to protest at the fact that those two male boxers were allowed to compete in women’s boxing on the basis of ‘passport sex’.
We signed letters by the International Consortium on Female Sport to Kirsty Coventry and the IOC imploring them to do the right thing and now that they have, we will keep campaigning for women and girls in Ireland and internationally to have fairness, safety and dignity in Sport. We will be writing to all National Governing Bodies in the coming weeks, urging them to immediately adopt a policy of a protected female category at all levels. We will be reassuring them that this is legal in Ireland, as evidenced by the IRFU policy and that it will be welcomed by the vast majority of those who are involved in sport.