The International Boxing Association The IBA said on Monday at a chaotic press conference that tests carried out on the two female boxers involved in a gender controversy at the 2024 Paris Olympics show that “they are men.”
According to the criteria of
The IBA had previously said it had disqualified the Algerian Imane Khelif and the Taiwanese Lin Yu-ting from the 2023 World Boxing Championships after female boxers failed gender eligibility tests, without specifying what those tests were.
Boxing at Paris-2024 is organised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) due to governance, financial and ethical issues with the IBA.
The IOC has cleared both boxers to compete in Paris-2024 and both Khelif and Lin have secured medals, since they advanced to the semi-finals in their respective categories. In boxing, the losers of the semi-finals win bronze.
‘Anomalies’
Imane Khelif vs Angela Carini
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The IBA and the IOC are in open dispute. The IBA press conference on Monday in Paris was called to clarify what tests Khelif and Lin underwent last year and what the results were.
The IOC told AFP on Monday that “the content and organisation of the IBA press conference says everything you need to know about this organisation and its credibility.”
IBA officials, including Kremlin-linked Russian oligarch Umar Kremlevpresident of the sports organization, who participated remotely via video call, gave a series of contradictory statements to a room full of journalists.
They said they were also obliged to respect medical confidentiality, although Ioannis Filippatos, former chairman of the IBA medical committee, did say that there were “abnormalities” in blood tests in 2022.
Imane Khelif, Algerian amateur boxer
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The two boxers were tested again in 2023 to confirm the initial findings, IBA officials said, and were then disqualified. “The medical results, the blood results, appear – and the laboratory says – that these boxers are men,” said Filippatos.
“The problem is that we have two blood tests with a male karyotype. This is the laboratory’s response,” she added.
“Medicine is knowledge, not opinion… A passport can give us the opportunity to be men, and tomorrow, when I return to Athens, I can go to my government and change my name from Ioannis to Ionnia. Does that mean that tomorrow I will be a woman? Please, nature and the biological world do not change,” Filippatos said.
A karyotype is a person’s complete set of chromosomes, according to the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute.
“Are they going to show us evidence or is it time for us to leave the room?” interrupted a journalist, at a contentious press conference. They did not.
Defending
The Algerian Olympic and Sports Committee has come to Khelif’s defence. “Our champion, Imane Khelif, remains unmoved and unfazed by the IBA’s baseless claims,” it said. It added that “Algeria is not a member of the IBA.”
“We do not recognise the IBA as a legitimate institution and it has no connection with the Olympic Games.”
The IOC and senior officials in Algeria and Taiwan have strongly defended Khelif and Lin, saying they were born and raised as women and have passports indicating that. The Olympic body, which expelled the IBA from the Olympic movement and with which it is openly at odds, accused it of making “an arbitrary decision” in disqualifying both boxers from the 2023 world championships.
The IOC told AFP on Monday after the IBA press conference: “The content and organisation of the IBA press conference says everything you need to know about this organisation and its credibility.”
The President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bachhad already condemned on Saturday the “unacceptable” attacks launched on social media against the two boxers and denounced a “hate speech” aimed at “feeding a political agenda”. Khelif and Lin also participated in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, but did not win a medal and competed without controversy.
With bronze already guaranteed, Khelif will fight on Tuesday at the Roland Garros facilities in Paris to reach the final of her category (-66kg), while Taiwanese Lin (-57kg) will do so on Wednesday.
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