PARIS – The athlete who has ignited a worldwide controversy in Olympic women’s boxing was disqualified from the 2023 International Boxing Assn. world championships in New Delhi after two tests, one in India amid that tournament and a prior test in Turkey in May 2022, “concluded the boxer’s DNA was that of a male consisting of XY chromosomes,” according to correspondence the IBA sent in June 2023 – more than a year ago – to the International Olympic Committee.
The June 5, 2023, letter, spotlighting Algeria’s Imane Khelif, reads, “This situation epitomizes the importance of protecting safe sport, and the integrity of sport in which the Olympic Movement is jointly committed to.”
3 Wire Sports has seen the letter and the tests.
The documents shed new light on the controversy enveloping Khelif and, as well, Yu Ting Lin of Chinese Taipei that has erupted at these Paris 2024 Games.
Algeria Imane Khelif leaving the ring when Angela Carini of Italy abandoned their fight // Richard Pelham / Getty Images
On Thursday, just 46 seconds into a preliminary round fight in the women’s under-66 kilogram class, after Khelif’s second right hand hit her in the nose, Italy’s Angela Carini quit, saying it hurt too much. That triggered the worldwide furor.
Khelif, in Saturday afternoon’s quarterfinals, defeated Hungary’s Anna Luca Hamori, ensuring the drama will persist. Now through to the semifinals, Khelif is assured of an Olympic medal.
Khelif fights next on Tuesday night against Thailand’s Janjaem Suwannapheng.
On Friday, in the women’s under-57 category, Lin defeated Sitora Turdibekova of Uzbekistan in the prelims. She is due to fight Bulgaria’s Svetlana Kamenova Sunday in the quarters.
The controversy – which has seen the likes of Donald Trump, J.K. Rowling, Elon Musk, Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni and untold numbers more on social media – spotlights one of the most challenging issues confronting international sports:
Whose rights matter more?
The individual athlete or the collective?
In boxing, it’s all the more challenging because, unlike, say, track and field, the potential for one athlete to get seriously hurt in competition is all the more real.
Since 2009, when the track athlete Caster Semenya burst onto the scene, this matter has sparked emotionally laden arguments on both sides.
The challenge is perhaps most acute involving athletes with what is called DSD, individuals with differences of sex development.
DSD is an umbrella term for a group of conditions where someone’s chromosomes, or hormones, don’t fit the usual expectations of being male or female.
Some say the individual athlete’s rights matter most.
Others insist there is a more vital collective right — for female athletes to have female-only sport, to be free from discrimination.
In recent years, with World Aquatics first, there have emerged guidelines among some number of international sports federations that say athletes with DSD who go through male puberty ought to be restricted from high-level female competition.
In boxing, this matter is all the more fraught because of a complex political dispute between the IOC and the IBA.
In sum, the IOC decided it simply does not like the Russian head of the IBA, Umar Kremlev, who is close to top Russian leadership. The IOC may say many other things. But that is the essence of the situation, and the IOC on June 22, 2023, withdrew recognition from the IBA, banishing it to the Olympic wilderness.
To reiterate, the IBA letter to the IOC, which refers to Khelif, is dated June 5 – 17 days beforehand.
A rival federation, World Boxing, is seeking recognition, and hopes to take over Olympic boxing in time for the LA28 Games.
Meantime, the IOC, just as it did in Tokyo three years ago, is overseeing the boxing competition here in Paris.
The IBA announced Friday it would give Carini prize money as if she were Olympic champion -- $100,000 in all, $50,000 to her, $25,000 to the Italian federation, $25,000 to her coach – and would also “support” Turdibekova. Referring to Carini, Kremlev said, “I couldn’t look at her tears.”
On Friday, at the daily IOC news conference, spokesman Mark Adams had this to say, referring to IBA testing at the 2023 New Delhi tournament:
“We have no knowledge of what the tests were. They were cobbled together, as I understand, overnight. There was a change in the results so we don’t want to go there. I think if you start working on suspicions, then we’re in trouble.”
On Saturday morning, IOC president Thomas Bach appeared at the daily news briefing. The first question, and several follow-up inquiries as well, related to this matter.
“Let’s be very clear here,” Bach said. “We are talking about women’s boxing.
“And we have two boxers, who are born as a woman. Who have been raised as a woman. Who have a passport as a woman. And who have competed for many years as a woman. And this is the clear definition of a woman. There was never any doubt about them being a woman.
“What we see now is that some want to own the definition of who is a woman, and there I can only invite them to come up with a scientific-based new definition of who is a woman and how can somebody being born, raised, competed and having a passport as a woman cannot be considered a woman?
“If they are coming up with something, we are ready to listen. We are ready to look into it. But we will not take part in a politically motivated – sometimes politically motivated – culture war. And allow me to say that what is going on in this context in the social media, with all this hate speech, with this aggression and abuse and fueled by this agenda is – totally unacceptable.”
When Bach says the IOC is “ready to listen” and “ready to look into it,” the obvious question – what about the IBA letter sent in June 2023?
The IOC’s position is that “the gender and age of the athletes are based on their passport.”
It continued in a statement issued Thursday that the two athletes were the “victims of a sudden and arbitrary decision by the IBA,” asserting that “towards the end of the IBA world championships in 2023, they were suddenly disqualified without any due process.”
It added: “… The current aggression against these two athletes is based entirely on this arbitrary decision, which was taken without any proper procedure – especially considering that these athletes had been competing in top-level competition for many years.
“Such an approach,” it asserted, “is contrary to good governance.”
An IBA technical document, effective May 13, 2023, says this: “‘Women/Female/Girl’ means an individual with chromosome XX. For this purpose, the Boxers can be submitted to a random and/or targeted gender test to confirm the above, which will serve for the gender eligibility criteria for the IBA Competitions.”
It also says, in section 4.2, “To determine the gender, the Boxers can be submitted to a random and/or targeted gender test which will be conducted by IBA in cooperation with the selected laboratory personnel.”
A prior version – effective February 9, 2023 – holds no such references.
The 2023 women’s world championships were held in March.
In May 2022, during the IBA women’s world championship in Istanbul, Lin and Khelif underwent chromosome tests, which were processed locally at a lab.
IBA minutes from March 25, 2023, the day before that tournament closed, indicate the results of the 2022 worlds tests “were received only upon the conclusion of the event, hence the athletes were not disqualified back then.”
Again, the next world championships would be in March 2023 in New Delhi. Why were both athletes allowed to take part?
“Another test was not possible to conduct when the athletes were outside IBA control until they arrived to New Delhi,” the minutes read.
In New Delhi, another test for each, “to reconfirm the findings of the initial test, which it did,” according to the June 2023 letter the IBA sent to the IOC.
The New Delhi lab reports for both Khelif and Lin say the same thing:
Result Summary: “Abnormal”
Interpretation: “Chromosomal analysis reveals Male karyotype.”
A karyotype means an individual’s complete set of chromosomes. Females have XX chromosomes, males XY.
The lab results for each athlete depict the XY chromosomes photographically.
The IOC asserts both athletes were DQ’d without due process.
The IBA minutes do say, as the IOC has said, that the decision to disqualify was made by the IBA secretary general at the time and that the board was asked to ratify that move.
At the same time, the minutes also make clear that – in the case of Khelif – the acting Algerian ambassador was present at that March 25, 2023, meeting and “invited to present the Algerian position and requested a second opinion on the issue.”
A majority of the board voted to approve the disqualifications, with one abstention and one no, Jose Laureano of Puerto Rico. Laureano then suggested that the IBA establish a “clear procedure on gender testing.” The new rules were in place by May.
The IBA said in a statement that Lin did not appeal the IBA disqualification to the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport, “thus rendering the decision legally binding.”
Khelif, the IBA said, initially lodged an appeal with CAS but dropped the case, “also making the IBA decision legally binding.”
Yu Ting Lin after a first Olympic fight // Washington Post // Getty Images
The June 2023 IBA letter, meantime, says:
“We are kindly writing to offer our support and cooperation on the matter as it directly impacts the safety of our boxers and the integrity of the [competition] results. In confidence, the IBA can share that Imane Khelif was disqualified from the IBA Women’s World Boxing Championships 2023 in New Delhi for breaching the IBA Technical and Competition Rules and was not medically eligible to participate in the event as a female boxer.”
To reiterate, the letter refers solely to Khelif. It directs the IOC to the attached lab reports.
It also expressly refers the IOC to that IBA “definition” of “women/female/girl” – defined as someone with XX chromosomes.
In a clear and unambiguous signal to the IOC that the IBA had recognized the loophole after New Delhi and closed it, in language mirroring the new rule, the letter says, “For this purpose, the Boxers can be submitted to a random and/or targeted gender test to confirm the above, which will serve for the gender eligibility criteria for the IBA competitions.”
The letter also says, “Regarding these essential principles of sport, we must share that the IBA and Prof. Richard McLaren are concerned,” referring to the Canadian legal expert retained by the IBA for governance review but also well-known within the IOC and the broader Olympic movement for his review of his Russian doping, “as some of the invited technical experts have been previously found to be high risk and their participation will subsequently put athletes’ safety in jeopardy.”
Sent a few weeks before the start of the 2023 European Games in Poland, the letter asks for a formal “technical meeting” to “discuss the necessary steps.”
Such a meeting never took place.
The letter concludes: “We trust that you will give this matter the utmost attention it deserves, and you have our absolute support on doing what is necessary to ensure the safety of competing athletes.”