Milan (Italy) (AFP) - IOC president Kirsty Coventry on Thursday hailed the progress being made in the construction of venues for next year’s Winter Olympics after she visited sites, including the Olympic village in Milan.

The Zimbabwean, a former swimming champion, was taken around the Olympic athletes’ village and the Santa Giulia ice hockey arena in the south of Italy’s economic capital, before making a brief statement to reporters.

The 42-year-old joked that the village was “making me want to become a winter athlete” adding that it was “really wonderful to see the fast pace and the progression” of construction.

The Olympic village is structurally complete, but the apartments, which will be converted into student housing, are yet to be furnished, while the area set to become the site’s gym is currently no more than an expanse of concrete.

The Milan-Cortina Games will take place in a vast area of northern Italy between February 6-22.

Former Italian Olympic Committee president Giovanni Malago, who is a Milan-Cortina board member, said that the IOC’s view of the sites has been “extremely positive”.

Coventry fielded no questions from reporters at Thursday’s event. A press conference is planned for Friday afternoon after the International Olympic Committee’s two-day executive board meeting.

That meeting could address thornier issues, such as the likely participation at the Winter Games of Russian athletes under a neutral flag.

Coventry did give an interview to Italian daily the Gazzetta Dello Sport, and reiterated what the Olympic Games’ executive director Christophe Dubi told reporters on Wednesday about Russian and Israeli athletes.

- War and gender -

“The problem with Russia is very specific, with the Russian National Olympic Committee violating the Olympic charter by annexing the regions of another NOC,” the Gazzetta reported Coventry as saying.

“With Israel and Palestine it’s different: their NOCs are not in conflict and they are in continuous contact with us.

“Sport is open to everyone and in general the athletes have no control other what their governments do or say. When I was winning medals (gold at the 2004 and 2008 Olympics) the Zimbabwean government wasn’t exactly behaving positively.”

Coventry told the Gazzetta she would like new guidelines on the politically inflammatory and scientifically complex issue of gender to be published “by mid-way through next year” following the creation of a working group.

“Obviously the situation is different from sport to sport: men and women already compete together in equestrianism but in other sports women need to be protected,” she said.

Some federations, such as World Athletics and World Boxing, have adopted chromosomal testing – generally a cheek swab.

Their rules make participation in women’s competition conditional on the absence of Y chromosome genetic material – known as the SRY gene, an indicator of masculinity.

Coventry said the guidelines put forward by the working group would be applicable “for the next 8-12 years”.

The IOC is under pressure after President Donald Trump’s “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order in July, which bars transgender athletes from competing in women’s sport in the United States and would apply to the Los Angeles summer Olympics in 2028.