SAUDI Arabia wants to host the Olympics — the catch being it’s only willing to allow male athletes to compete on its soil.

Prince Fahad bin Jalawi al-Saud, a Saudi Olympic Committee consultant, is proposing a joint bid in which the games be segregated with Bahrain hosting the women’s competitions.

“Our society can be very conservative. It has a hard time accepting that women can compete in sports,” he told Francs Jeux, a French sports website. “We could envisage a joint bid. Bahrain would hold the women’s events, we would hold the men’s competitions.”

The International Olympic Committee recently changed its rules to allow joint bids.

Saudi Arabia sent female athletes to the Olympics for the first time at the 2012 London Games after Qatar and Brunei also acquiesced following pressure from the IOC.

However, 800-metre runner Sarah Attar and judoka Wojdan Shaherkani were criticised on social media as “prostitutes” by hardliners in the strictly religious kingdom despite being accompanied by a male guardian and wearing a Sharia-compliant kit that covered their hair.

The two women competitors were given special dispensation to compete by the IOC after the Saudis’ only legitimate female qualifier — showjumper Dalma Rushdi Malhas — had to pull out when her horse was injured.

The IOC has already responded to Prince Fahad bin Jalawi al-Saud’s proposal, saying the country can’t “outsource” its social issues and declaring it ineligible to bid until restrictions on women in sport were lifted.

“A commitment to ‘non-discrimination’ will be mandatory for all countries hoping to bid for the Olympics in the future,” IOC president Thomas Bach said in a statement. “Countries like Saudi Arabia must really work to allow female athletes to freely participate.”