Megan Rapinoe has accused the International Olympic Committee of bowing to the wishes of the Trump administration with their ‘hateful… horrible’ ban on transgender athletes.
In a landmark decision earlier this year, Olympic chiefs blocked transgender athletes from all women’s sports after announcing mandatory sex testing under new rules. The IOC claims a once-in-a-lifetime SRY gene test will help ‘protect fairness, safety and integrity in the female category’.
That decision followed high-profile controversies involving boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting at the Paris 2024 Olympics, after claims that they had failed gender eligibility tests with the International Boxing Association (IBA).
But the decision has been slammed by Rapinoe, a former US soccer star who and Trump critic who has never been afraid to speak out on controversial topics. In a furious reaction on the A Touch More podcast with her partner, basketball star Sue Bird, Rapinoe said she is ‘sickened’ by the ‘horrible’ change.
She insisted the decision is not rooted in science and is instead ‘a total acquiescence to the Trump administration and to really right-wing conservative politics.’
The former soccer star claimed the rule ‘is just bringing down so much hate against such a small percentage of people who are just trying to live their life. It’s just horrible and I’m just sickened by it, really.’
Megan Rapinoe slammed the decision to ban transgender athletes from all women’s sports
Rapinoe accused Olympic chiefs of bowing to the wishes of the Trump administration
All athletes wishing to take part in women’s events must take sex tests (pictured: Imane Khelif)
Rapinoe continued: ‘This committee is framing it as based in science, which it’s not… this will ultimately just prevent people from competing within the women’s category that they feel like they have an unfair advantage.
‘It’s just really hateful. There’s been so few athletes that are trans or competing as trans and it’s so blatant on its face.’
The former USWNT star said the IOC’s policy ‘has nothing to do with protecting women’ and pointed out that neither she nor Bird agree with the ruling.
‘I feel like two people, who played at the very highest level for every competition that you possibly could, don’t agree with this and never felt like this was an issue at all, ‘The Protection of the Female [Women’s] Category,”‘ she continued.
‘We already know that biology, as much as we want it to be just nice and clean and tight and perfectly in one category and another, it’s not. We know that.
‘So, now what we’re doing is subjecting everybody, all women and all people who are identifying as women to this really invasive testing that only to me says like, “Oh we’re just trying to whittle it down to a certain type of woman.” Is that what we’re doing? That’s really the whole game here.
‘They sort of lost the battle on gay marriage and lost the battle on all these things so it’s just like: “We’re gonna have this whole campaign for all these years to just hate trans people,” which is such a small percentage of the population. It’s actually on a single hand when we’re talking about sports.’
