With women all over the world rejoicing at the International Olympic Committee’s new women’s policy, the ABC goes glum or schtum. Women’s Cooee commentators Vera Figner and Emma Peel observe and analyse.
ABC News 24, 27/3/2026:
Anchor, Kathryn Robinson:
Transgender athletes have been banned from women’s events at the Olympics.
Vera Figner:
[Groans] Only the men, pet. All the women are still there, as long as they’re not taking testosterone: Nikki Hiltz, Hergie Bacyadan, Quinn, Elis Lundholm …
Anchor, Kathryn Robinson:
The International Olympics Committee agrees to the new gender policy ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
Emma Peel:
[Groans] Do you think the ABC will ever stop using the word ‘gender’ when they mean ‘sex’?
Vera Figner:
Maybe once they cut ties with ACON. We’ll be on the lookout for it.
Anchor, Kathryn Robinson:
The policy aligns with an Executive Order signed by the US President Donald Trump on sport ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
Vera Figner:
Oh, you’re kidding me, pet! Associating the change with Trump? People have been working for this ever since the IOC adopted the testosterone-threshold policy in 2015, which allowed more men into the women’s category.
Anchor, Kathryn Robinson:
Tracey Holmes is the host of The Sports Ambassador podcast, and she joins me now from Sydney.
Emma Peel:
Oh my goddess, not Tracey Holmes!! She’s got form, hasn’t she, Vera! Been doing her best to promote men in women’s sport since at least 2018, when she hosted awards night for ACON’s Pride in Sport program. Remember that clanger of a claim she made in an ABC radio broadcast in 2021, when she said Hannah Mouncey – 1.88 metre, 100 kilo Hannah Mouncey! – is the one most likely to be hurt in a clash with a female opponent?
Vera Figner:
Ooh yes, we did a twitter tile on that one, didn’t we. And put it in our first flyer. Then there was that report she did for ABC TV News NSW in 2023, the one where she managed to fit six false or misleading statements into a three-minute item on changes to World Athletics policy on eligibility for the women’s category.
Emma Peel:
Didn’t she leave the ABC in 2023? So why are they wheeling her again now? Doesn’t the ABC have a stable of proper sports reporters of their own?
Vera Figner:
She must be seriously, seriously pissed off at what the IOC’s just done.
Tracey Holmes:
In the history of the Olympic Games, as far as we know, there’s been one transgender athlete who’s competed, and that was the New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard back in Tokyo 2020 and she didn’t even finish her competition.
Emma Peel:
Oh, that ‘she’ and ‘her’! How they shape the audience’s perceptions! So misleading!
Vera Figner:
Holmes has been plugging this line for years: the presence of men-who-say-they’re-women in women’s sport is a non-issue, there aren’t any, it’s a storm in a teacup, etc. There may have been only one in the Olympics so far, but without changes in elite sports policy there would have been plenty more coming up, like Lia Thomas in swimming and Cecé Telfer in athletics. Oh, and let’s not forget Valentina Petrillo, who competed in the women’s category at the 2024 Paris Paralympics.
Emma Peel:
And Laurel Hubbard might’ve come last at Tokyo but he won gold at the 2017 Australian International in Melbourne, the 2019 Pacific Games in Samoa, and the Roma 2020 World Cup in Rome. In every case taking medals that should’ve gone to women. And at Tokyo he took a place at the comp that should’ve been filled by Nauruan weightlifter Roviel Detenamo. And he still gets to call himself an Olympian for the rest of his life.
Tracey Holmes:
This [new policy] has a much heavier impact on the DSD athletes [than on transgender athletes].
Vera Figner:
Holmes makes a distinction between trans and DSD (disorders/differences of sexual development), which is good: ABC reportage doesn’t always do that. But then she mangles her account of what DSD athletes are. She at no point mentions XY chromosomes, or 5-ARD, or the SRY gene, or male puberty. She calls DSD athletes ‘women’, and says they were ‘born as women’, but elsewhere says that they’re ‘not one or the other’, and ‘not fully female’. She says she’s explaining ‘very simply’. But she’s actually confusing the issue totally. And she’s a professional sports journo, it’s her job to make things clear. She’s failed.
Emma Peel:
What gets me is that she isn’t all interested in what the impact of the new policy will be on women. On our dignity, on our confidence, on our sense of our own value. On our belief that there is justice in the world. Holmes is only interested in the impact on men. For example, she mentions the ‘catastrophic’ distress caused to DSD athletes – and DSD athletes are men, let’s face it – DSD athletes who’ve been raised as female and suddenly find, as a result of sports testing, that ‘they’re not who they think they are’ and are ‘not able to compete as they had done previously’. Sure, that’s tragic; but so is the psychological distress, disillusionment, and sense of injustice caused to female athletes by the IOC’s and other elite sport policies that allowed, or allow, men into the women’s category. And Holmes doesn’t say a word about that.
Tracey Holmes:
They feel that they are putting this policy in place for the benefit of a majority of the athletes. Now we know that consensus also means that minorities end up being sidelined somewhat and this is what’s happened here.
Emma Peel:
When she said ‘for the benefit of’ I thought the next word was going to be ‘women’, or ‘fairness’, or ‘integrity of women’s sport’. But none of that features in Holmes’s discourse. Instead she frames the issue as a dominant majority getting their way over a discriminated-against minority. What she doesn’t quite say is that this supposedly discriminated-against minority have greater strength, power and endurance as a result of having undergone male puberty, and have come to dominate the supposedly dominant majority in areas where they compete. For example, the three DSD runners who won gold, silver, and bronze in the 800 metres at Rio in 2016, or the boxer Imane Khelif at Paris in 2024.
Tracey Holmes:
There are many people that have been arguing for this [ie the new IOC policy] – a lot of women, especially the older women who have been competing in the early days when they really had to struggle to get numbers into the Olympics and to be taken seriously across a variety of sports.
Emma Peel:
What an insulting put-down of veteran campaigners like Sharron Davies and Linda Blade and Martina Navratilova. Insinuating they’re over the hill, out of touch, behind the times, etc.
Vera Figner:
It’s rubbish anyway, pet. There are plenty of younger women who’ll be celebrating today. What about Deborah Acason? Who forced her way onto Q+A when Stan Grant –
Emma Peel:
Tracey Holmes’s hubby, just by the way.
Vera Figner:
– when Stan Grant was planning an episode discussing trans in women’s sport and had cobbled together a panel that didn’t have a single woman athlete on it. How old is Deborah Acason?
Emma Peel:
43.
Vera Figner:
Riley Gaines?
Emma Peel:
26.
Vera Figner:
Iuniarra Sipaia?
Emma Peel:
33.
Vera Figner:
Kirsty Coventry herself?
Emma Peel:
43.
Vera Figner:
All younger than Tracey Holmes. I rest my case.
Emma Peel:
I must say, I was overjoyed when I heard Kirsty Coventry’s announcement; I know a lot of other women – a lot of other people – were too. That jubilation doesn’t get expression anywhere in this news segment. The ABC is just not reading the room on this one. As usual.
Vera Figner:
Tell me, pet: Does ABC TV do any better elsewhere, reporting this new policy of the IOC’s? What about Offsiders? Isn’t that supposed to provide a panel of leading sportswriters, commentators, and athletes who are examining the issues, highlights, and news in sport?
Emma Peel:
Crickets from the Offsiders episode broadcast on 29 March. Which was three days after the IOC announcement, so you’d think there would’ve been enough time for them to get their head around it, recognise its importance, and have something sensible to say about it. But no. We got Gout Gout and a bit of basketball, AFL, NRL, and cricket.
Abbey Gelmi and Rebecca Allen did talk a bit about the recent pay rise in the WNBL, so I was hopeful there might be something in the Observations or the I’ll-Leave-You-With bits at the end; but no.
Vera Figner:
Ooh, they’re too young to care, pet!
Emma Peel:
Very droll, Vera, very droll. Shall we crack open the champagne now?
