The International Boxing Association defended its decision to disqualify Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting from competition after both athletes failed an unspecific sex-identification test, pushing back against criticism from the International Olympic Committee, which opted to allow the athletes to compete against women at the Paris games.
Khelif and Lin were disqualified at the 2023 IBA Women’s World Championships after failing gender-eligibility tests, but the IOC let both compete against female opponents this summer on the grounds that both boxers are identified as female on their passports.
Khelif’s Thursday match with Italy’s Angela Carini, who quit only 46 seconds into the match after taking a significant blow to the face, sparked criticism that the IOC had imperiled female athletes by forcing them to fight opponents who possess significant physical advantages. Neither Khelif nor Lin has publicly identified as transgender.
Multiple IBA officials briefed the media on the controversy on Monday, confirming the results of both athletes’ sex disqualifications, though the officials would not provide details on the exact nature of the test that was administered.
Dr. Ioannis Filippatos, former medical chair of the IBA, told international reporters that Khelif is, in fact, male and cast the IBA’s decision to bar the Algerian boxer from the women’s championship last year as the right call in defense of women’s sports.
“We need to protect women’s sports, and we know how to protect them,” Filippatos said.
Later in the press conference, he could not say whether Khelif was a biological woman but defended his organization’s gender tests.
“The medical result and the laboratories say that this boxer is male. I have seen this result. We are not against Khelif, she is a very good boxer,” Filippatos said. “In this case, we need the boxer to collaborate with the laboratories. She is a very good boxer, but as a doctor, I need to protect the women’s category.”
Chris Roberts, CEO of the IBA, added that the boxing governing body cannot disclose the scientific tests themselves as the complete details are confidential.
As a longtime medical professional, Filippatos contended that the science behind the tests is sound, rejecting IOC president Thomas Bach’s suggestion that passports can be used to judge biological eligibility.
IOC leaders have denied the credibility of the IBA’s gender tests, maintaining that the two boxers in question were born female and always competed as women without incident. Late last week, Bach invited outspoken critics of Olympic women’s boxing “to come up with a scientific-based new definition of who is a woman, and how can somebody being born, raised, competed and having a passport as a woman cannot be considered a woman.”
The International Olympic Committee’s “Portrayal Guidelines” argue that “a person’s sex category is not assigned based on genetics alone.”
Led by Umar Kremlev, an acquaintance of Vladimir Putin, the IBA has drawn significant media scrutiny over its financial ties to Russia, which the IOC claims is responsible for the gender controversy at the heart of its Summer Olympics. The IOC has raised serious concerns about the IBA’s connections to Russia, culminating in its 2019 decision to permanently strip the international boxing federation of its Olympic credentials. As one of his first moves as IBA president, Kremlev struck a major sponsorship deal with the Russian gas company Gazprom.
Russia, whose athletes were caught doping during past Olympic games, was not invited to compete in Paris this year.
Responding to the controversy on Sunday, Khelif, who clinched a medal on Saturday, called for an end to bullying as online criticism of the match with Carini continues to mount.
“I send a message to all the people of the world to uphold the Olympic principles and the Olympic Charter, to refrain from bullying all athletes, because this has effects, massive effects,” Khelif told SNTV, a sports-video partner of the Associated Press. “It can destroy people, it can kill people’s thoughts, spirit and mind. It can divide people. And because of that, I ask them to refrain from bullying.”
Notably, Khelif declined to answer when asked if tested for anything else, such as gender, other than doping. The boxer did not want to talk about the subject.