Two boxers who were disqualified from competing with women at a global event last year have been permitted to fight in the Paris Olympics, the International Olympic Committee confirmed.
Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu‑ting of Taiwan failed to meet gender eligibility tests at the Women’s World Boxing Championships in New Delhi last year, prompting their disqualifications. But they have been cleared to compete in the women’s 66-kilogram and women’s 57-kilogram matches in Paris this week, the IOC confirmed in an email Tuesday.
At the time of their disqualifications, the president of the International Boxing Association, which governs the World Boxing Championships, alleged that the boxers’ chromosome tests came back as XY (women typically have two X chromosomes, while men typically have an X and a Y chromosome).
“Based on DNA tests, we identified a number of athletes who tried to trick their colleagues into posing as women,” the association’s president, Umar Kremlev, told Russia’s Tass news agency at the time. “According to the results of the tests, it was proved that they have XY chromosomes. Such athletes were excluded from competition.”
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.
Following her disqualification last year, Khelif told Algeria’s Ennahar TV that some “did not want Algeria to win a gold medal.”
“This is a conspiracy and a big conspiracy, and we will not be silent about it,” she said.
Lin does not appear to have commented publicly on her disqualification.
In an email Tuesday, the IOC said that “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 updated its rules regarding athletes’ gender eligibility, including its transgender participation guidelines, in 2021 to defer to each sport’s governing body. The IOC no longer recognizes the IBA as the governing body over Olympic boxing, and instead refers to the Paris 2024 Boxing Unit — an ad-hoc unit developed by the IOC — for its eligibility standards.
Critics in the United States, where the issue of whether trans women should be permitted to compete in women’s sports has been hotly debated in recent years, condemned the inclusion of Khelif and Lin in this week’s competition. Some questioned whether their participation was fair to other female competitors, while others directed incendiary language toward the boxers.
Khelif is scheduled to compete against Italy’s Angela Carini on Thursday, and Lin is scheduled to fight against Uzbekistan’s Sitora Turdibekova on Friday.
