Australian Olympic Committee boss Matt Carroll has suggested that the transgender athlete guidelines which will be in place for the Tokyo Games are in need of revision as the subject continues to cause controversy in world sport.
"I have sympathy for female athletes competing in this space," Carroll said on 2GB.
"I have sympathy for them because this issue was going to be addressed and hasn't been addressed. It would be good if the IOC could, because it's now 2020 and the last time it was addressed it was 2015, and time has moved on.
"There's not much the AOC can do, we are bound by the guidelines of the IOC, but if there could be a way of review, perhaps I suggest it won't happen until after the 2020 Games, I think that'd be good.
"I know that the IOC wants to put athletes at the centre of the decisions they make."
Carroll's comments come as numerous transgender athletes try to qualify for the upcoming Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, including Kiwi transgender athlete Laurel Hubbard.
Hubbard recently edged closer to Olympic qualification after winning the women's super-heavyweight weightlifting contest at the Roma World Cup, prompting British commentator Piers Morgan to call out the issue of "insane, political correctness".
Officially, male-to-female transgender athletes have been allowed to compete in the Olympics since 2016 providing their testosterone remains low enough for a year, under IOC guidelines.
Three-time Australian Olympian Tamsyn Lewis claimed earlier this week that many athletes were afraid to speak out about the issue.
"There's been a lot of people who are scared to come out and say anything because of political correctness," Lewis told 2GB.
"It's a sensitive topic, and people don't really want to be the people who are making a stand. But the thing that concerns me is if we don't make a stand, what's going to happen to that female category of sport.
"If you've grown up a male and had testosterone your bone structure is different to the female, your upper body strength is going to remain, you've got greater lung capacity a larger heart size.
"There's too many unknowns about how much going through puberty and being born a male is going to effect your result."
Carroll said the difficultly in updating the guidelines may be in the fact that classification of the potential advantage gained in each sport is different.
"It would depend on the sport as well in terms of how much advantage they bring," he explained.
"I think that's maybe why the IOC has been challenged on how they come up with new guidelines because it's not just a simple measure of testosterone.
"I think the logical place for this to be raised is the medical commission of the IOC, but also the athlete's commission. I think it's something they could discuss."
2GB radio host Ben Fordham claimed that Carroll's comments suggested that: "These Games we're heading into are being contested on an unlevel playing field, and I think we need to do something about that."
"That level playing field is very important," Carroll said.
"Every athlete should be able to go into their competition knowing that apart from talent it is a level playing field.
"These Games are on a level playing field that were developed at the time, but that doesn't mean you don't continue to review.
"People shouldn't be scared, be it a transgender athlete or a female athlete, to have this discussion. I don't think it's a discussion whether anyone wants to discriminate, it's just exactly that everyone wants to enter a level playing field."
from WWOS http://wwos.nine.com.au/news/tokyo-olympics-ioc-transgender-guidelines-need-updating-says-aoc-chief/53e94658-2f08-4005-9dc2-ba3adbe67ad9
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