Olympics Return to Reality-Based Competition

Summary

The CBMW Podcast

Episode: Olympics Return to Reality-Based Competition
Date: April 15, 2026
Host: Jonathan Swan
Guest: Colin Smothers

---

Overview

In this episode, Jonathan Swan and Colin Smothers of CBMW discuss the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) newly announced policy requiring genetic testing for female athletic eligibility. The conversation delves into the implications of this policy reversal, the broader cultural shifts surrounding gender, and the underlying tension between scientific evidence and activist positions in sports. The hosts frame the development as a vindication for those who support biologically-based divisions in athletics and critique the rhetoric and policies of the transgender movement in recent sporting history.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. IOC Policy Shift: From Self-ID to Genetic Testing

• [00:43-01:54]
  • The IOC now mandates athletes must test negative for the SRY gene to compete in female events—effectively limiting participation to those who are biologically female.
  • This is a sharp reversal from their 2021–2024 stance, which deferred to self-identification and denied any inherent biological advantage.
  • Quote (Jonathan Swan, 00:43):
    “Athletes must now test negative for the SRY gene and thus be biologically female to participate in, get it, female events... To ensure fairness and to protect safety, particularly in contact sports, eligibility should therefore be based on biological sex.”

2. Contrast with Past Olympic Policies & Outcomes

• [01:54-06:13]
  • Swan and Smothers recall the Rio 2016 Olympics, noting the women's 800m podium was filled exclusively with biological males.
  • In 2021, the IOC still claimed sex variations didn’t present competitive advantage, contradicting observable outcomes.
  • The shift is seen as a response to years of controversy and recent political developments, including executive orders in the U.S. under President Trump.
  • Quote (Colin Smothers, 02:48):
    “The world went insane for 10, 12 years. And it seems like, at least here with the release of this news... they have completely reversed directions and they are now saying they want to only limit competition... to women. That is, what are women? Biological females.”

3. Scientific Evidence and Bureaucratic Language

• [06:14-08:25]
  • The hosts are skeptical of the IOC’s claim that new scientific evidence drove the change, arguing the biological realities have always been known.
  • They interpret the IOC’s legalese as an attempt to "save face" after years of denying biological differences.
  • Quote (Jonathan Swan, 08:14):
    “This bureaucratic talk. The legalese is to save face. That’s what it’s doing. Right? It's based on the latest scientific evidence. No. You guys knew the whole time and were lying.”

4. Concerns About Athlete Safety and Fairness

• [08:26-11:57]
  • The conversation highlights incidents where women were physically harmed by competing against biological males, especially in boxing.
  • Previous justifications for allowing self-identified women (regardless of biology) are criticized as invalid and dismissive of women’s safety.
  • Sporting federations sometimes had stricter policies than the Olympics, leading to inconsistencies and further controversy.

5. Refuting Arguments Against Sex Testing

• [11:57-13:36]
  • Common objections (e.g., testing is invasive, expensive, discriminatory) are dismissed.
  • Smothers explains that modern genetic testing is non-invasive and accurate (simple saliva swab suffices).
  • He argues it's more discriminatory to force female athletes to compete against biological males.
  • Quote (Colin Smothers, 12:34):
    “It's not discriminatory to recognize that somebody is a male and somebody is a female... You're disadvantaging the female competition by making them... compete against biological males.”

6. State of the Transgender Movement

• [13:36-15:19]
  • Smothers describes the movement as “in retreat” due to recent legal and cultural defeats.
  • Acknowledges the international context—Europe had already begun reversing course on some issues before the U.S.
  • Calls for continued advocacy for biblical and biological definitions of sex and gender.
  • Quote (Colin Smothers, 14:33):
    “On the whole, it does seem like the transgender argument is losing in the public square. That said, I don’t think that means we can let up.”

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

• Jonathan Swan:

  • “Athletes must now test negative for the SRY gene and thus be biologically female...” [00:43]
  • “This bureaucratic talk. The legalese is to save face.” [08:14]

• Colin Smothers:

  • “The world went insane for 10, 12 years.” [02:48]
  • “It’s not some invasive procedure. It’s literally a saliva swab... every cell of your body is telling you... your biological sex.” [10:18]
  • “On the whole, it does seem like the transgender argument is losing in the public square.” [14:33]

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• IOC’s Policy Announcement & Background: [00:43-01:54]
• History of Previous Olympic Controversies: [01:54-06:13]
• Critique of IOC’s Rationale & Language: [06:14-08:25]
• Examples of Safety and Competitive Fairness Issues: [08:26-11:57]
• Refuting Objections to Sex-Based Eligibility Tests: [11:57-13:36]
• Implications for Transgender Movement and Future Outlook: [13:36-15:19]

---

Tone and Style

The tone remains assertive, sometimes wryly critical, with both hosts expressing deep skepticism about the IOC’s former positions. They frequently emphasize longstanding scientific knowledge and biblical anthropology, contrasting it with what they term the “insanity” and “legalese” of recent years. The conversation is direct, focused, and consistently framed within a conservative Christian response to gender and sports policy.

---

Conclusion

This episode examines the IOC's return to sex-based athletic eligibility through a biblical and scientific lens, celebrating the reversal as validating long-held beliefs about the distinction and importance of biological sex in sport. The hosts urge listeners to stay engaged in cultural debates, despite recent policy victories, and to continue advocating for a reality-based understanding of gender in society and athletics.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Download of cutting edge complementarian commentary and one stop shop for egalitarians opposition research. I'm your host, Jonathan Swan, executive editor of icon, a journal for biblical anthropology. And I'm joined by the executive director of cbmw, Colin Smothers. We are sadly without our president today, but the show must go on. Colin, how are you doing?

[A]

Great, John. Glad to be back on the podcast. Man. Spring has sprung around here and the semester is quickly heading to a close. So very, very busy, but all good things.

[B]

Good to hear. Yeah, we've got some big, big news now. This is a couple weeks old what we're going to talk about today, but it's still, in the grand scheme of things, pretty fresh. So just a few weeks ago, the International Olympic Committee released a new policy that requires genetic testing to determine an athlete's eligibility for participating in female athletes. So athletes must now test negative for the SRY gene and thus be biologically female to participate in, get it, female events. So the committee based this new policy on the findings of a working group which determined that to quote them, male sex provides a performance advantage in all sports and events that rely on strength, power and endurance to ensure fairness and to protect safety, particularly in context. Sports eligibility should therefore be based on biological sex. So we here at CBMW are glad to welcome the IOC to back into the world of gender reality. All right, Colin, what should we take from their new statement? What are we to think about this?

[A]

Yeah, I think, you know, the top line is this is a complete reversal from their policy as of even five years ago or the Olympics in 2024. So you rewind the tape back in five. Five years ago I read this on a BBC article that was associated with the breaking of this news. And, and five years ago the president of the IOC was quoted saying that they the IOC was not in a position to issue regulations that define eligibility criteria. So basically they're kicking the can down the road. And then the chairman said this, or the president said this, quote, athletes should not be deemed to have an unfair or disproportionate competitive advantage due to their sex variations. In other words, saying your sex variations or your biological sex does not present any kind of competitive advantage one way or another. That was the official position. The president of the ioc. Now you might wonder, well, what was going on back in 2021 that was, you know, eliciting this kind of comment. Well, if you rewind the tape back in to 2016 and you look at what was going on specifically in the Olympics, the Olympics that year were in Rio. I don't know if listeners will remember this, but there was a race. Again, this is mentioned in this BBC article. There was a race in the women's division of the 800 meters. And literally the entire podium was filled with biological males. We're talking about first place, second place, and third place in the 800 meters. You can go look this up. Was filled. You know, the race was won first, second and third by biological males, which mean there was. There was not a single biological female on the stands there in Rio. The Olympics, world Olympics for the 800 meter race. That was the milieu, that was the environment in which this president of the IOC was speaking and saying they just have no way of, you know, adjudicating these matters. And not only that, but people should really stop making a big deal about, you know, sex variations because they don't represent any kind of competitive advantage. In other words, don't pay attention to your lying eyes. Just listen to us, the experts. I mean, what we're talking about is the fact that the world went insane for 10, 12 years. And it seems like, at least here with the release of this news at the end of the month, last month by the ioc, that they have completely reversed directions and they are now saying they want to only limit competition for the Olympics. So we're talking about the olympics now in 2028 in Los Angeles. To women. That is, what are women? Biological females. And more importantly than that, how do you determine whether someone is a biological female? It is genetically determined. That is completely different from what the world has been saying about how do you determine someone's sex or gender? Remember the transgender activist, the liberal activist class, for the last 10, 12 years has been telling you the way you determine someone's gender or sex identity is by asking them what they are by self identification. Now we have the official committee, the IOC of the Olympics, saying no sex is biologically determined. And not only that, it's genetically determined. You can actually do a genetic test to determine someone's eligibility and biological sex, and that will determine competition for the next Summer Olympics. And that is a huge win for conservatives and complete vindication.

[B]

It sure is. Yeah. In their official statement, they say based on scientific evidence, the IOC considers that the precedence of the SRY gene is fixed throughout life and represents highly accurate evidence that an ev. That an athlete has experienced male sex development. So, Colin, you were citing 2021, the podium full of transgender athletes.

[A]

That was 2016. Yeah, 2016 in Rio.

[B]

Yeah, okay, 2016. It was in 2020. One rather, where they. They issued that. That statement.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

Right. That we can't determine whether sex makes a difference. And of course, everyone knows that it does. We come to 2025. It was last year, at the start of President Trump's second new administration, where we see a number of executive orders go out. One of them pertained to athletes that had some effect on the Olympic Committee because the American Olympic Committee basically outlawed transgender athletes. In response to that, organizations like glaad, the Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, spoke out against it. But it's hard not to see what's happening here as sort of a result of some of those things, a result of the vibe shift that we're going through now. I'm not saying this. This whole thing has been turned over. I think of largely the sexual revolution is now endemic. Right. It's not at peak, peak insanity, it is waning, but these things are still endemic. I'm glad to see this. And I want us to be magnanimous here. Right. We welcome, we praise these decisions. These are good decisions. At the same time, I do think we should need to point out the absurdity and credit the absurdity where it needs credited or discredited.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So they cite the working group as the reason for their change. And it's funny, I know I did. I just cited how they say it based on scientific evidence elsewhere. They say the working group reviewed the latest scientific evidence, including developments since 2021, and reached a clear consensus. We didn't need any of the latest scientific evidence. These are things that have been known forever.

[A]

That's right. It's almost like they're saying, break breaking news. Biological sex genetics actually makes a difference in athletic competition. It's like, where have you guys been?

[B]

This bureaucratic talk. The legalese is to save face. That's what it's doing. Right? It's based on the latest scientific evidence. No. You guys knew the whole time and we're lying.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

That's a matter of fact.

[A]

Well, and you know, listeners will remember the 2024 Olympics. This was in Paris and there was those couple of female boxers who are. They were actually turned out that they were women boxers competing in the women's composition. They were actually male and they just destroyed the competition to the point where the women boxers were being physically harmed and people were concerned for their safety because there was this biological male named Iman Khalif. And he competing in the women's division was. Yeah, was. Was really just outpacing the entire composition competition. And also really harming them. And one of the things I want to, I want to point out, you know, from the other side of the aisle, so to speak, those who have been supporting that, you know, the, the Olympics decision to allow anybody who self identifies to be able to compete in these things. Number one, they were actually going against some of their own, like world federation, sports body bodies that govern these sports. So like the boxing federation or the cycling federation, they had their own rules that actually excluded people. Like a main khalif. Like a main khalif couldn't compete in the world boxing championship. But then for some reason, because the Olympics policy, they could do that. And one of the reasons why the liberal activists, progressive activists were saying that, that, you know, there's no way to be able to test these things and we shouldn't really worry about it, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't matter is because they were, they were saying it would be a total invasion, invasion of privacy to be able to determine biological sex. Here's what I want listeners to pay attention to very carefully. Do you know how the Olympics committee recommends going about figuring out whether the presence of this SRY gene is there? In other words, you're trying to figure out, does this person have a Y gene that activates male puberty or is that absent? That's how you determine biological sex, presence or absence of the Y gene. How it's been done scientifically and historically through for, you know, millennia. But do you know the way that the Olympic Committee recommends to figure that out? It's not some invasive procedure. It's literally a saliva swab. So you take a swab, you, you know, swab the inner cheek, and you can go test that. Do you know what that means? Every cell of your body is telling you and testifying to your biological sex. Okay, it's, you don't have to have any kind of invasion of privacy like the, the, the ways that the liberal activists were portraying it. You know, some kind of like have to go into the locker room and do some sort of, you know, invasive test. No, it's a saliva swab. Because again, every cell of your body is either coded X, Y or xx. It's either male or female. And that actually determines not only your biological sex, but the reason why the Olympic Committee is actually waking up to this is because they finally recognize that they, being biological male does give a competitive advantage. Again, you can go Back to that 2016 Rio Olympics, an unfair competitive advantage such that to ignore the difference between male and female is actually to sort of completely compromise the reason for women's sports at all in the first place.

[B]

Yeah. Colin, how would you respond? You already did to some extent. I want you to hear some of these other objections to what's going on. So last summer, when the Trump administration, or the. The Actually the US Committee for Olympics changed their rules to bar transgender athletes from participating in female sports. Glad says sex testing has a problematic history as unreliable, expensive, invasive, which you already addressed, and discriminatory, yet could be used to enforce bans that baselessly exclude transgender and intersex people at all levels of sport.

[A]

I mean, that's just a complete statement of gobbledygook. It doesn't mean anything. It's not discriminatory to recognize that somebody is a male and somebody is a female. Like, I'm not making any kind of value judgment there to say that women are women and men are men, and I want them to be able to compete against one another. In fact, I mean, I would flip the tables there and say it's actually you who are disadvantaging the female competition by making them. Forcing them to compete against biological males, such that we already see evidence in 2016 in Rio, when that happens, the podium is dominated by the biological male males in the competition. And so it's just total nonsense. And they're. They're begging the question. They're. They're not even addressing the reality that there are genuine differences between men and women, males and females. So the reason why we have men's divisions and women's divisions in the Olympics, and they're just in. They're in total denial of reality.

[B]

Last question here, Colin. What do you think this decision has to say about the current state of the transgender movement?

[A]

Yeah, I would cautiously say that that movement is in quite a bit of retreat. I do think there has been a vibe shift. I do think that there has been. There have been a number of legal and cultural setbacks for that movement. In other words, wins for conservatives in this arena. Wins. You know, that we've talked about, including the Supreme Court, including Trump's executive orders. But notice, this isn't just limited to what's happening in America. This is something that's actually being acknowledged by an international body. Right. The Olympic Committee. So, in other words, the vibe shift is not just because of American electoral politics.

[B]

In fact, we've been behind on some of this stuff.

[A]

That's right. Yeah. That's right. That's right. And we kind of caught the bug that the European continent had already had going for a long time. And then they were already stepping back from it when we were just sort of ramping all the way into it. So I do think that on the whole, it does seem like the transgender argument is losing in the public square. That said, I don't think that that means we can let up. I think we need to continue to press the truth regarding what the Bible clearly reveals. God created us, male and female, in his image. Also what the world, what nature clearly reveals. That is, men and women are different according to design, and that is biologically determined. It's not determined by, you know, feeling and identity.

[B]

Thank you, Colin. And thank you to our listeners. Hey, you can find more resources by CBMW by going to cbmw.org.