Two boxers who were disqualified from the women’s world championships for failing to meet gender eligibility requirements just last year will be allowed to compete against women during the Paris Olympics.
Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu‑ting of Taiwan will fight biological women this week in Paris, sparking serious concerns over biological men being allowed to compete against women - particularly in high-contact combat sports like boxing.
The International Boxing Association said it had banned both Khelif and Lin from fighting in women’s championships last year “following a comprehensive review and was intended to uphold the fairness and integrity of the competition,” saying tests came back indicating that both boxers had “XY’ chromosomes identifying them as biological males.
In fact, according to The Guardian, an internal IOC info website provided to journalists states that Khelif was “disqualified just hours before her gold medal showdown against Yang Liu at the 2023 world championships in New Delhi, India, after her elevated levels of testosterone failed to meet the eligibility criteria.” The IOC site also stated that Lin was “stripped of her bronze medal after failing to meet eligibility requirements based on the results of a biochemical test.”
But since then, the IBA has been removed from running the Paris Olympics boxing events, a job that’s been passed over to the IOC’s Paris 2024 Boxing Unit, the governing body that cleared both Lin and Khelif to compete and which has far more lax rules surrounding trans athletes.
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To be fair, there's a question as to the actual biological gender of both of these boxers - questions that should be extremely easy to answer, but which the IOC has notably declined to clear up.
NBC News reports that “Khelif and Lin have both always competed as women, and there’s no indication that either identifies as transgender or intersex, the latter referring to those born with sex characteristics that don’t fit strictly into the male-female gender binary.”However, despite clearing both Khelif and Lin for competition in the women’s category in Paris, the IOC has not explicitly stated that the boxers are actually biological females. Instead, an IOC spokesperson said simply, “I would just say that everyone competing in the women’s category is complying with the competition eligibility rules. They are women in their passports and it is stated that is the case.”
And, since concerns still abound, it’s worth pointing out that these are the two "women" in question:
IOC defends two ‘female’ athletes who previously failed testosterone and gender eligibility tests because they had male chromosomes.
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) July 30, 2024
Boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu‑ting were previously disqualified from the 2023 women’s boxing world championships with the International Boxing… pic.twitter.com/rfdIdvxu3O
In fact, one female boxer told Yahoo! Sports she’s relieved to have survived her fight with Khelif back in 2022, which had to be stopped in the third round after Khelif landed multiple blows to her head, saying she'd never fought any woman who threw hits like that.
After Khelif was booted from competition just before the scheduled fight against Yang Liu last year, the Algerian Olympic Committee claimed their boxer was disqualified for “medical reasons,” while Khelif blamed a “conspiracy” to keep Algeria from winning a gold medal. Kehlif is now scheduled to square off against Italy’s Angela Carini on Thursday.
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