Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, the two finalists in Women’s Boxing at the Paris Games, failed a chromosome test last year, according to the International Boxing Association.
Both boxers have garnered intense criticism for appearing to be male.
The IBA held a last-minute press conference Monday in order to clarify why both boxers had previously been banned from participating in the IBA.
“Today we are witnessing the death of female boxing, the corruption of judges. All of these happens when Mr. Bach [is] president,” IBA head Umar Kremlev said.
Chris Roberts, the chief executive of the IBA, revealed that both athletes had failed sex chromosome tests, Reuters reported.
Though Roberts could not disclose the results of the test for legal reasons, he said the two boxers’ disqualifications on those grounds would allow the public to “read between the lines.”
If both boxers had failed chromosome tests for female boxing, that would presumably mean they both have XY chromosomes.
The International Olympic Committee maintains that both boxers are “women,” however.
Should the International Olympic Committee apologize to female boxers?
“We have two boxers who were born as women, raised as women, who have passports as women and who have competed for many years as women, and this is a clear definition of a woman,” IOC President Thomas Bach said, per Reuters.
Others maintain that the credibility of the IBA is highly questionable considering its Russian connections.
“I cannot tell you if they were credible or not credible [gender tests] because the source from which they came was not credible and the basis for the tests was not credible,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams said, per ABC News.
“For that reason there was no consideration of whether they were correct or not correct because they had no bearing for the eligibility of boxing here.”
According to Reuters, the IOC and IBA’s relationship went south following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The IBA is run by a prominent Russian, Kremlev, and Russian state energy firm Gazprom was once a main sponsor, though Kremlev claims it no longer serves as one.
IOC officials believe the IBA is using complaints against Khelif and Yu-ting to undermine the Paris Olympics as a whole.
Notably, the nation of Russia was excluded from participating in the games because of the invasion.
Conflicting reporting on the two controversial athletes’ sex complicated the story.
Multiple outlets reported that Khelif suffers from an incredibly rare medical condition known as “Differences of Sex Development.”
The Cleveland Clinic defines DSD as “conditions where a person’s reproductive organs and genitals are ‘mismatched’ at birth. Examples include male chromosomes (XY) and genitalia that appears female (vulva) or female chromosomes (XX) and genitalia that appears male (penis). Some people with DSDs have characteristics of both sexes.”
If both sides are telling the truth, one possibility is that Khelif and Yu-ting were females born with DSD.
This could explain why both could have been assigned “female” on their birth certificates while also having XY chromosomes.
