Barred boxing federation says Khelif failed chromosome test
he Algerian and Taiwanese boxers embroiled in a dispute over gender in sport at the Paris Games were disqualified from the 2023 World Championships after a sex chromosome test ruled both of them ineligible, the International Boxing Association said on Monday.
A storm erupted over the participation of Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting at the Olympics after Khelif’s Italian opponent pulled out of their bout less than a minute into the fight after taking a barrage of punches.
The boxing competition at Paris 2024 is taking place under International Olympic Committee rules after the IOC stripped the IBA of its status as the sport’s global governing body over governance and finance concerns.
IBA chief executive Chris Roberts said he could not disclose the results of the gender eligibility tests but that the pair’s disqualification from the 2023 women’s World Championships meant the public could “read between the lines”.
“The results of the chromosome tests demonstrated both boxers were ineligible,” Roberts told a chaotic press conference that was late starting, suffered sound problems and was dominated by the IBA’s Russian president’s lengthy rants.
He said the results of the tests had been sent to the IOC in June last year and that it had done “nothing with it”.
The dispute has revived debate over the balance between fairness and safety, particularly in women’s sports, where differences of sexual development can result in a competitive advantage that might prove dangerous.
The IOC says the IBA is a discredited organisation, mired in financial opaqueness and compromised by ties to the Russian leadership.
“The content and the organisation of the IBA press conference tells you everything that you need to know about this organisation and its credibility,” an IOC spokesperson said.
It has said that Khelif and Lin were “victims of a sudden and arbitrary decision by the IBA” to test them and that they were disqualified in 2023 without due process.
“We have two boxers who were born as women, raised as women, who have passports as women and who have competed for many years as women and this is a clear definition of a woman,” IOC President Thomas Bach said on Saturday.
