Boxing officials stepped into the ring in Paris, boldly announcing that two fighters “are male.”
“The medical results, blood tests, and the laboratory findings indicate these boxers are male,” declared the IBA at a chaotic press conference in the French capital.
The IBA claims its tests show Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting “are male.
In a heated bout with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the International Boxing Association (IBA) claimed on Monday that tests on the two boxers involved in a gender controversy at the Paris Olympics show they “are male.”
The IBA had previously disqualified Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting from the 2023 world championships after they failed gender eligibility tests, but the specifics of the tests were not disclosed.
In Paris, the IOC, which is managing the Olympic boxing matches due to the IBA’s financial, governance, and ethical issues, had cleared both fighters to compete. Both athletes have advanced to the semi-finals, guaranteeing them a medal.
However, the IBA continues to insist that its tests confirm Khelif and Lin “are male.”
The two organizations are openly sparring.
The IBA’s press conference was intended to shed light on the tests that Khelif and Lin underwent last year and to explain the results.
IBA officials, including Kremlin-linked Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev, the IBA president who joined via video call, delivered a series of conflicting statements to a room full of reporters. They also cited medical confidentiality as a reason for withholding details.
The press conference was as intense as a heavyweight title fight.
Former IBA Medical Committee Chairman Ioannis Filippatos made it clear that “abnormalities” were detected in blood tests in 2022. The boxers were retested in 2023 to confirm these findings, leading to their disqualification.
“The medical results, blood tests, and the laboratory findings indicate these boxers are male,” Filippatos said.
“The issue is that we have two blood tests showing a male karyotype. This is the lab’s conclusion.”
For context, a karyotype is an individual’s complete set of chromosomes and can be used to identify abnormalities.
The Algerian Olympic and Sports Committee quickly counterpunched, stating: “Algeria is not a member of the IBA. We do not recognize the IBA as a legitimate institution, and it has no connection with the Olympic Games. Our champion, Imane Khelif, remains undeterred by the IBA’s baseless claims.”
IOC President Thomas Bach, along with high-level officials from Algeria and Taiwan, has fiercely defended Khelif and Lin, asserting that they were born and raised as women, with passports to prove it.
The IOC, which has effectively thrown the IBA out of the Olympic ring, accused the IBA of making “an arbitrary decision” in disqualifying the two fighters in 2023.
Khelif and Lin also competed at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, but without the controversy and without medaling.
