Transgender women athletes banned from female Olympic events
Global News Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 8.2K Ratings
🗓️ 27 March 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The International Olympic Committee says women's events at the 2028 Los Angeles Games will be restricted to biological females, after years of controversy over transgender participation. Also: President Trump has again pushed back his threat to start bombing Iranian energy plants, giving Tehran ten more days to open the Strait of Hormuz. An initial deadline was supposed to expire on Friday. Lawyers for the former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores argue they should be allowed to use Venezuelan state funds to pay for their defence against drug trafficking-related charges; Paul McCartney announces his first new album in more than five years; and the Manchester City striker Erling Haaland donates a rare Viking book to the town in Norway where he grew up.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.5 | This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:12.1 | I'm Janet Jalil and in the early hours of Friday, the 27th of March, these are our main stories. |
| 0:18.5 | Transgender athletes are to be banned from women's sports at the next Olympics. |
| 0:24.0 | President Trump gives Iran 10 more days to agree a peace seal or face attacks on the country's power plants. |
| 0:33.5 | Also in this podcast, the Manchester City striker Erling Horland denotes a rare and ancient |
| 0:39.7 | book of Vikings to his hometown in Norway. |
| 0:43.5 | Erling is proud of where we come from. |
| 0:45.6 | He gave us a big, huge gift to Brinner, and we're so grateful and thankful for that. |
| 0:55.9 | After years of controversies involving transgender athletes, it's been announced that |
| 1:00.7 | women's sports at the Olympics will be ring-fenced for athletes who are biologically female. |
| 1:06.3 | The International Olympic Committee says that the ruling will take effect from 2028 at the next games in Los Angeles. |
| 1:14.0 | Under the new rules, transgender women or those with differences in sexual development or DSD, |
| 1:19.5 | will no longer be able to compete in female events. The IOC says a once-in-a-lifetime sex test will be introduced before those games. |
| 1:30.2 | Here's the IOC President, Kirsty Coventry. |
| 1:33.0 | The policy that we have announced is based on science, |
| 1:36.0 | and it has been led by medical experts with the best interests of athletes at its heart. |
| 1:41.4 | The scientific evidence is very clear. |
| 1:46.7 | Male chromosomes give performance advantages in sports that rely on strength, power, or endurance. At the Olympic Games, even the smallest |
| 1:52.9 | margins can be the difference between victory and defeat. So it's absolutely clear that it would |
| 1:58.6 | not be fair for biological males to compete in the female |
| 2:01.7 | category. In addition, in some sports, it would simply not be safe. Our sports editor Dan Rowan |
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