Olympic officials defend fighters’ eligibility in women’s boxing controversy

PARIS — Lin Yu-ting strode toward the boxing ring Friday fully aware that she was walking straight into a swirling controversy that has turned the Paris Olympics into a forum for a fierce debate about biology, gender and fairness in women’s sports.

Dressed all in red and greeted with a mix of cheers and boos from the crowd, Lin, who competes for Taiwan, stepped through the ropes for her opening match, bowed a couple of times and got to work. Emerging victorious about 15 minutes later, she greeted some of her supporters and then left the arena as silently as she had arrived. She declined to speak to reporters.

At the same time, Olympic officials were working urgently to rebut what they described as widespread “misinformation” — spurred by a 46-second fight Thursday — that led some to question the presence of Lin and another boxer, Imane Khelif of Algeria, in the Paris Games a year after they were disqualified from the world championships in a dispute about their eligibility.

Mark Adams, the chief spokesperson for the International Olympic Committee, criticized news articles and social media posts that he said sought to cast doubt — unfairly, in the view of Olympic officials and even some other competitors — on the gender of Khelif.

“There has been some confusion that somehow it’s a man fighting a woman,” Adams said. “This is just not the case scientifically.”

Adams stressed at a news conference that Khelif and Lin are not transgender. And he defended the right of both boxers to compete in Paris.

“The question you have to ask yourself is, are these athletes women?” Adams added later. “The answer is yes, according to their eligibility, their passport, their history.”

Khelif won her opening bout Thursday when her Italian opponent, Angela Carini, abandoned their bout after taking a powerful punch to the face. Carini’s comments immediately afterward about the force of Khelif’s punches provoked strong reactions, including from Italy’s prime minister, who criticized what she called “a match that did not seem on equal footing.”

Carini later told reporters that the controversy over her defeat “makes me sad” and said she was worried about the focus on Khelif, who will fight next in the quarterfinals Saturday. “If the IOC said she can fight,” Carini said of Khelif, “I respect that decision.”

On Friday, Carini went further in an interview with an Italian website in which she addressed Khelif directly. “Hi, Imane,” she began, “I hope you make it to the finals and that you win the Olympics.”

The fallout from Khelif’s victory, however, brought new scrutiny to the various and sometimes minimal and vague rules regarding eligibility for some women’s sports, as well as to a fractious dispute between the IOC and the former governing body for boxing at the Olympic Games.

Even as he defended Khelif, Adams acknowledged a lack of scientific, political and social consensus about how to resolve eligibility issues across women’s sports. “It’s not a black-and-white issue,” he said, referring to the topic as “a minefield.”

At the same time, he cautioned, “If we start acting on every issue, every allegation, that comes up, then we start having the kind of witch hunts that we’re having now.”

Sex testing began at the Olympics in 1968 and was halted in 2000. As questions about gender eligibility have grown more complex, the IOC has left it up to individual sports governing bodies to determine their own eligibility rules. In doing so, the Olympic committee has also left itself open to criticism that it should have acted more decisively to strengthen boxing’s rules after expelling the sport’s governing body last year and taking full control of the Olympic competition.

At the Paris Olympics, boxing is being overseen by a temporary body set up by the IOC after the International Boxing Association was stripped of its authority in June 2023. But the rules for the event were established by the boxing association several years ago, and those regulations primarily link a competitors’ eligibility to the gender listed on their passport. The boxing association’s rules permit gender testing at competitions but give no details about the circumstances.

Last year, though, Khelif and Lin were disqualified during the world championships by a murky process that the IOC this week called “arbitrary” and “unfair.” The decision has never been fully explained by boxing officials.

Both athletes have competed in women’s boxing for years, including at the Tokyo Olympics, at which neither won a medal. Lin is a former world champion, and Khelif a former silver medalist at that event.

The widespread criticism of them now, even before Lin had entered the ring Friday, had been “pretty emotionally damaging” to the two boxers, Adams said.

The president of the boxing association, Umar Kremlev of Russia, told the Tass news agency after the 2023 world championships that Khelif and Lin had been disqualified during that competition because they possessed X and Y chromosomes, the typical male pattern.

It is not clear if Kremlev was referring to what is called a difference of sexual development known as 46XY DSD. Athletes with the condition are legally female or intersex; have the typical male pattern of chromosomes; testes or ambiguous genitalia; testosterone in the male range; and the ability to respond to testosterone in ways typical to men. Track and field, for instance, requires athletes with this condition to lower their testosterone levels to a designated point for two years before being eligible to compete in international competitions.

Minutes of a boxing association board meeting held shortly after the 2023 disqualification appear to show that the ouster was decided solely by the association’s CEO and later ratified by its board. The minutes also stressed the need for the boxing association to establish “a clear procedure on gender testing.”

Christian Klaue, another IOC spokesperson, said Friday, “You cannot just come out and disqualify somebody and say, ‘OK, we don’t have rules and we establish the rules afterward.’”

According to the minutes of the meeting, Khelif and Lin also failed eligibility requirements at the 2022 world championships in Istanbul, but testing results were not received until the conclusion of the competition, so the athletes were not disqualified.

They were allowed to compete at the 2023 world championships but then disqualified during the competition. The precise nature of the testing administered in 2022 and 2023 remains unclear.

According to the boxing association, Khelif initially appealed her disqualification last year to the Court of Arbitration for Sport “but withdrew the appeal during the process, making the association’s decision legally binding.” Lin did not challenge her disqualification.

Some Olympic officials have noted that Khelif’s disqualification came after she had defeated a Russian boxer, though there has been no proof that this caused Khelif’s ouster.

Before decertifying the International Boxing Association, the IOC expressed concern about the association’s heavy reliance for funding on Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, as well as its concern about scandals involving refereeing and judging.

While suspended in 2023, the boxing association invited Russian athletes to compete under their own flag at the world championships in New Delhi, contravening IOC recommendations after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Three months later, the Olympic committee withdrew the authority of the International Boxing Association to oversee the sport at the Paris Games.

On Friday, women’s boxers asked for their reactions about the presence of Khelif and Lin seemed uninterested in prolonging the debate. A Tunisian coach called the furor over Khelif “political.” And Jucielen Romeu of Brazil, who is on Lin’s side of the bracket in her weight class, said she had no opinion on the controversy.

“I’m focused on the next fight,” she said through an interpreter.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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