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The Economist looked at and has a perfectly reasonable solution.

The short version is that gender may be fluid, but biological sex isn’t.

They propose two categories, biological female by sex and Open.

Kinda like it used to be.

Men tend to have a physical advantage, and that is just biology.

But the problem with thus line of thinking is it opens a massive can of worms. Like for example all of the best long distance runners in the world come from a handful of tribes in Kenya, where they have thinner calves and ankles than other people. And this is statistically a much bigger advantage than the advantage trans women get. So should we ban Kenyans from competing since they have a biological advantage too?

Or even simpler stuff like height. Tall people have advantages in so many sports. So if you're only 150cm because of your biology, you're never going to be a pro basketball player for example. Does that mean we need to do something about this, since it's so unfair?

I have no clue how to resolve this

I think the first step needs to be asking why we do this and what we want. We have women's sports because (cis) women generally cannot compete sufficiently with (cis) men. But what are we trying to accomplish? I would say in middle school and high school our goal should be inclusivity. So trans men and women should be able to compete in their identified genders.

On the other hand in college and the Olympics inclusivity is probably not as important for adults competing at some of the highest levels. So I am more willing to accept some limits, but I'm certainly not well versed enough to know where to draw that line.

It's not that they shouldn't be allowed to compete, I think there needs to be a greater restriction on who and how they compete.

This whole thing started because of Lia Thomas who was a competetive male swimmer from the age of 5 until they completed hormone treatment at the age of 22.

They had the benefit of male puberty and trained as a male. That's going to make a difference.

Now if you take a child who has not yet hit puberty, put them on blockers, then allow them to transition with hormones and surgery, you're going to end up with a completely different athelete.

It's good that the sports organization recognizes that trans atheletes need to be on hormones for a set period of time before being allowed to compete, but there needs to be a policy addressing WHEN they started the hormone treatment.

Starting after puberty has completed should be a non-starter, or at the very least a different category of competition.

My understanding is that if the athlete is correctly undergoing Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) the biological advantage is significantly reduced if not removed. I am sure there are exceptions though.

Edit: Everything below

After looking through some studies it seems like Trans fem athletes do maintain some advantage, or atleast the current wait time is not enough for the edge to be eliminated.

Best example I could find https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/current-treatment-period-may-be-too-short-to-remove-competitive-advantage-of-transgender-athletes/

because it's "exclusionary" or something. A lot of sports, specifically the Olympics, just doesn't really care about it. I think the uproar over this really just goes to show the problem with sports as a whole. Rather than individuals.

I mean, at least in swimming something to be said about anatomical male vs anatomical female pelvices. Males pelvices are taller and have a more limited range of motion, whereas females are the opposite in both.

Effectively, this means males overall are more capable at just a normal kick in a swim stroke, because their pelvices are fairly locked in their motion and less muscles are required to stabilize the movement. On the otherhand, females can be more capable in things like frog kicks.

While biological tests are fine, someone's sex does determine their bone structure, which can, like in swimming, affect performance. I'm sure there are other examples, but I swam so that's my only experience.