Woman Quits Olympic Boxing Match against Opponent Who Was Previously Disqualified over Sex-ID Test

Italy’s Angela Carini quit 46 seconds into a women’s boxing match against Algerian opponent Imane Khelif in the 66 kg category, who was disqualified from a women’s championship last year after a sex-identification test. 

“It isn’t fair,” yelled Carini through tears after receiving two punches from Khelif during the match. Carini quit the match after 46 seconds and Khelif was declared the winner. Carini is suspected to have a broken nose and is awaiting medical inspection, the Daily Mail reported. 

Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting are two Olympians competing in women’s boxing who were previously disqualified from the 2023 International Boxing Association Women’s World Boxing Championships in New Delhi after a sex-identification test. Neither Khelif nor Yu-ting have publicly identified as transgender.

The International Boxing Association president Umar Kremlev told a Russian news agency in 2023 that Khelif and Yu-ting were ineligible for the women’s world championship title because DNA tests had “proved they had XY chromosomes.” Kremlev added that the two athletes “attempted to deceive their colleagues and passed themselves off as women.”

The International Boxing Association (IBA) issued a statement on Wednesday about the disqualification of Khelif and Yu-ting from the 2023 women’s championship. 

“This disqualification was a result of their failure to meet the eligibility criteria for participating in the women’s competition, as set and laid out in the IBA Regulations,” reads the statement. “Point to note, the athletes did not undergo a testosterone examination but were subject to a separate and recognized test, whereby the specifics remain confidential. This test conclusively indicated that both athletes did not meet the required necessary eligibility criteria and were found to have competitive advantages over other female competitors.”

The statement mentioned that Yu-ting did not appeal the IBA’s decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and Khelif appealed the IBA’s decision but then withdrew. According to minutes from an IBA meeting in 2023, similar laboratory testing and results for Khelif and Yu-ting were recorded in 2022, although the results were received after the championship and therefore they were not disqualified. 

International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams said before the Olympics boxing match between Carini and Khelif that “These boxers [Khelif and Tu-ting] are entirely eligible. They are women on their passports. It’s not helpful to start stigmatizing like this. We all have a responsibility not to turn it into some kind of witch-hunt.”

“[Carini] rightly followed her instincts and prioritized her physical safety, but she and other female athletes should not have been exposed to this physical and psychological violence based on their sex,” Reem Alsalem, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls, said after Carini withdrew from the match. 

The IOC’s “Portrayal Guidelines” instruct members of the media not to use the “problematic” terms “male” and “female” in their coverage of the Olympics.

“A person’s sex category is not assigned based on genetics alone,” the guidelines read.