IBA President Umar Kremlev told the Russian news agency Tass last year the disqualifications were because “it was proven they have XY chromosomes.”
The issue, which had been simmering for a few days around the Games, blew up Thursday after one of the two women, Algeria’s Imane Khelif, won her opening bout in Villepinte. Her opponent, Angela Carini, quit less than a minute into the 66-kg (145.5-pound) round-of-16 bout following a powerful punch to her nose.
It remains unclear what standards Khelif and Lin Yu Ting of Taiwan failed last year to lead to the disqualifications.
The IOC, which is overseeing the boxing competition in Paris, does not test for gender, and there never has been evidence that either Khelif or Lin had XY chromosomes or elevated levels of testosterone. They have competed for years, including at the Tokyo Olympics and several world championships.
In his comments to Tass in 2023, Kremlev said two boxers were given DNA tests. In the minutes of the IBA’s board of director’s meeting held two days after the women were disqualified, George A. Yerolimpos, the organization’s CEO and secretary general at the time, told the attendees the women had failed tests conducted by an independent laboratory. He also told the meeting’s attendees that both women had failed a different test, conducted by a different laboratory, at the previous year’s world championships in Istanbul, but that the results had come too late for the fighters to be disqualified.
The meeting’s minutes do not say what kind of test had been administered or the name of the laboratory. Yerolimpos told the meeting that he “closely followed” the women’s testing as soon as they arrived in India.
In a statement this week, the IBA said the women did not “undergo a testosterone examination” but “a separate and recognized test.” The statement added that the test and results are “confidential.”
In a statement issued Thursday evening, the IOC said: “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 is contrary to good governance.”
Throughout the week, IOC officials have said they had no reason to keep either boxer from the Olympics. Several times, IOC spokesman Mark Adams has cautioned that the controversy involves “real people” and stressed that “this is not a transgender issue” in the face of attacks from critics of transgender athletes.
A person with knowledge of last year’s disqualifications from worlds but not authorized to speak publicly called Khelif and Lin’s banishments “classic IBA disinformation.”
Three people familiar with the details of the women’s case pointed out that the disqualifications came three days after Khelif defeated Russian Azalia Amineva and a day after she won her semifinal bout in the 63-66-kg (139-145.5-pound) category.
Fed up by a history of judging and bribery scandals involving the IBA even before Kremlev was first elected as the organization’s president in 2020, the IOC took control of Olympic boxing at the Tokyo Games. It became suspicious when Kremlev spent heavily on marketing himself, lined up only one sponsor — Russian energy company Gazprom — and battled with Olympic leaders. The IOC took control of the boxing competition at the Paris Games as well, and it left the sport off the program for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
Three months after Lin and Khelif were disqualified, the IOC decertified the IBA. Another organization, World Boxing, supported by the United States, the Netherlands and several other Western countries, has emerged as a potential replacement for the IBA. In the 14 months since, relations between the IOC and IBA have deteriorated further.
On Wednesday, Kremlev posted a video on X, criticizing the Paris Games Opening Ceremonies and calling IOC President Thomas Bach “a chief sodomite.”
Despite the suspect credibility of last year’s disqualifications and the fact that neither boxer is transgender, several high-profile critics of transgender athlete issues seized on the results of the fight as well as comments made by Carini, who told reporters: “It could be the match of my life, but in that moment, I had to safeguard my life, too.”
Within an hour of the fight, social media was alive with posts blasting Khelif and Lin as well as the IOC. In comments to La Gazzetta dello Sport, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said the fight was unfair, baselessly citing Khelif’s testosterone levels.
Tennis legend Martina Navratilova said on X: “This is all on [the] IOC and those in power who make the rules. It’s a travesty and makes a mockery of all Olympic sports.”
