Paris Internet Reacts: Who and what decides which female athletes can compete? This is a tough question brought up by the cases of two Olympic boxers.
Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan were both kicked out of the 2023 women’s boxing world championships because they apparently did not meet the requirements for their gender.
The International Olympic Committee said this week that both boxers are free to participate at the Paris Games, just like they were at the Tokyo Games in 2021. At the Olympics, people are talking a lot about so-called “gender verification” or “sex testing” as the boxers get ready to fight at North Paris Arena.
Khelif, who won a silver medal at the 2022 world championships, is set to fight Angela Carini of Italy on Thursday in the 146-pound welterweight class. Lin is going to meet Sitora Turdibekova of Uzbekistan in the featherweight division at 126 pounds. Lin is a two-time world champion.
When asked about the situation on Tuesday, Australian fighter Tiana Echegaray said, “Yeah, it’s really tricky.” “I don’t know exactly what their circumstances are.”
Mark Adams, a spokeswoman for the IOC, said on Tuesday that no personal information about the boxers’ medical histories would be shared. Adams told the media, “They’ve been boxing for a very long time.” “They meet all the requirements in terms of age and gender.” We’re following the Tokyo rules.”
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Who is in charge of the fights?
The IOC lets the international federations that run each of the 32 sports decide who can compete in the Summer Olympics based on their rules.
The IOC does give the world federations a framework. But it doesn’t bind anyone.
To put it another way, the IOC has no say in it. And things have gotten even more difficult with boxing.
The International Boxing Association (IBA) was kicked out of the IOC last year because it had been involved in too many scandals and problems that put the future of Olympic boxing at risk. In fact, the IOC didn’t let the IBA run Olympic boxing at the Tokyo Games in 2021. Instead, they gave the job to ad hoc group.
That makeshift group was in charge of both Kehlif and Lin’s trips to the Tokyo Olympics. They both didn’t get a trophy.
But the IBA has kept control of the world finals and the rules for which genders can play. And after Lin won gold and Kehlif won bronze at the event in March 2023, the medals were taken away because the champions failed medical tests to be eligible.
The head of the IBA, Umar Kremlev, said that DNA tests “proved they had XY chromosomes and were therefore excluded.”
What are the requirements to be eligible?
Adams, the IOC spokeswoman, said that a passport could be important.
“I would just say that everyone competing in the women’s category is following the rules for being eligible for the competition,” he said. “It says on their passports that they are women, which is true.”
Thursday, Adams said that the problems with the boxers’ earlier tests “weren’t a transgender issue; the press has been wrong about that.” For many years, these women have been fighting as women.
“I just want to say quickly that the testosterone test isn’t perfect.” A lot of women can have testosterone, even at what would be called “male levels,” and still be women and fight as women. So the idea that you should test for testosterone all of a sudden is not a cure-all. It’s up to each sport to deal with this problem, but I think we all agreed—I hope we all agreed—that we won’t go back to the bad old days of “sex testing.” “That’s not a good idea.”
Science has been used in the past to decide who was eligible for other things.
World Athletics, the sport’s international body that used to be called the IAAF, told Caster Semenya she couldn’t compete in the 400 meters because her testosterone levels were too high. She had won two gold medals in track and field at the Olympics in 2012 and 2016.
From the time she was born, Semenya was a girl. She said that when she was 18, she was told that she has XY genes and naturally has a lot of testosterone.
Khelif and Lin haven’t talked about their medical backgrounds in public about the tests.
In 2022, swimmer Lia Thomas became the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA title. This caused a lot of controversy in the United States about who was eligible to compete.
At that time, the NCAA said that transgender female players could only play on a women’s team in any sport after they had been treated to lower their testosterone levels for one year. Since the NAIA banned all transgender players from women’s sports, the NCAA has been under a lot of pressure to change its rules.
The world swimming federation World Aquatics made a decision in June that Thomas could not compete in elite swimming events through World Aquatics or USA Swimming. The Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld that decision.
How do you know these two boxers?
BoxRec, a well-known boxing website, says Lin, who is 28 years old, has been fighting as an amateur for more than ten years.
She won her first recognized tournament as an amateur about three months before she turned 18. It was the 2013 AIBA World Women’s Championships. She won two gold medals at the worlds in 2019 and 2022.
At 5 feet 9 inches, she has often had an edge in height. She has a record of 40-14 with one knockout. The four fights she won at the 2023 world championships before she was disqualified are not on the record because the results of those fights were changed to “no contest.”
In April 2024, at the USA Boxing International Invitational in Pueblo, Colorado, she lost her last fight to Jucielen Cerqueira Romeu of Brazil by a split decision.
The 25-year-old Khelif played her first match as an amateur at the 2018 Balkan Women’s Tournament. There was a silver medal for her at the 2022 worlds.
BoxRec says she has a 36-9 record with four knockouts and is 5 feet 10 inches tall, which gives her an edge. That doesn’t count the three fights she won at the 2023 world championships before she was disqualified and the fights were ruled “no contest.”
Khelif stopped her opponent by TKO in one of those fights.
