LGBT

What’s Going On With the Two Women Boxers Who “Failed” a Gender Test
They’ve both been cleared to compete in the Olympics, and anti-trans activists are furious—even though the women aren’t trans.
BY CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI
AUG 01, 202412:39 PM

Two women boxers will be allowed to compete in the Paris Olympics despite being disqualified from the 2023 World Championships for failing to meet sex-testing standards, the International Olympic Committee announced Monday. The news should have been no big deal—it was simply the IOC following its own protocol. Instead, it was met with anger, fearmongering, and smears from journalists and advocates who want to keep trans people out of sports.

Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan—neither of whom is transgender—competed in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and have won medals at previous world boxing tournaments. But last year, the International Boxing Association, the governing body for the sport, disqualified Khelif and Lin during the tournament. According to an IOC database, Khelif was removed from the 2023 championships just hours before she was set to compete for the gold medal because “her elevated levels of testosterone failed to meet the eligibility criteria.” Lin competed, and even won the bronze in the tournament, but the IBA took it back after she was found ineligible, “based on the results of a biochemical test” that likely found high testosterone levels or chromosomal variance.

So why the different treatment at the Olympics? The IOC and the IBA have different medical standards for competitors. The two institutions parted ways in 2019, after the IOC stripped the IBA of its Olympic status amid concerns about its integrity, finances, and governance. The IBA president at the time, Uzbekistan’s Gafur Rakhimov, had incurred U.S. sanctions for his alleged participation in the heroin trade and in a Eurasian crime syndicate. The IOC was also wary of the association’s dependence on funding from Gazprom, the Russian state energy firm. (The IBA has since dropped Gazprom as a sponsor.) Since the split, the IBA has taken on a new president, Umar Kremlev, who has accused Khelif and Lin of “trying to fool their colleagues and pretend to be women.”

But the IBA is no longer responsible for running the qualifying matches that lead up to the Olympics—the IOC does that, and it has found that Khelif and Lin are eligible competitors. “All athletes participating in the boxing tournament of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 comply with the competition’s eligibility and entry regulations, as well as all applicable medical regulations,” the IOC said in a statement.

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