Trump has promised to ban all transgender women from female sports competition and regularly focused on the issue during his election campaign, including in TV ads criticizing transgender athletes that aired during sports broadcasts.

He has previously condemned trans-inclusive teams, arguing they threaten women’s sport.

Trump’s rhetoric may please those concerned about the impact of transgender inclusion on fairness and safety in women’s competition. But with the 2028 Games set to be held in Los Angeles, others fear it could also put him at odds with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which has allowed individual sports to choose their own eligibility policies gender

Trump also mocked Olympic women’s boxing champion Imane Khelif, who won gold at Paris 2024 a year after she was disqualified from the World Championships for failing gender eligibility tests.

In Republican campaign videos in the days leading up to the US election, Trump questioned the fighter’s biological sex, using it as an example of how he claimed that “telling the truth” had become “hate speech” under Joe Biden’s government.

Algerian Khelif and her Olympic association have always said she was born a woman and is a woman.

The IOC condemned the “abuse” Khelif received, blaming it on “prejudice and culture wars”, declaring the fighter eligible to fight in women’s boxing.

There could also be tension with the Paralympic community ahead of LA 2028, with Trump previously denying allegations that he mocked a disabled reporter with a congenital joint condition at a rally in 2015. Three years later, he was reprimanded and by the International Paralympic Committee for saying that: The Pyeongchang Paralympic Games were “difficult to watch”.