Paris Olympics: What's behind boxing controversy?

In one corner, you have the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the most powerful institution in world sport.

In the other, you have the International Boxing Association (IBA), amateur boxing's global governing body, which is no longer officially recognized by the IOC.

The cases of two female boxers competing at the Paris Olympics have been thrust into the public spotlight in recent days, exposing a yearslong feud between the two organizations and reigniting a debate over fairness, safety and inclusion in women's sport.

Why exactly is boxing in the spotlight?

Unwittingly caught in the middle of this, through no fault of their own, are the two boxers: Imane Khelif of Algeria and Taiwan's Lin Yu-ting. The IBA has said both failed gender tests during the World Boxing Championships in March 2023, although it has not provided clear information about what types of examinations were conducted.

Both Khelif and Lin have since become the victims of abuse and false assertions on social media, which have been called "unacceptable" by Andrea Florence, director of the Sports & Rights Alliance, a coalition of human rights groups.

"The obsessive speculation around women's bodies under the guise of 'fair play' is rooted in harmful gender and racial stereotypes," she said.

What is the history of the feud?

The feud between the IOC and the IBA stems from the 2016 Rio Olympics. Allegations of judges fixing fights during the Games in Brazil were confirmed by an independent investigation and led to the IOC demanding that the IBA clean up its act or risk losing its status as a governing body.

As an interim measure, the IOC took over the running of the boxing competition at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, as it has also done this year in Paris.

However, far from improving its governance, the IBA further angered the IOC when it reelected Umar Kremlev as president without contest in 2022.

Kremlev, a Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin, has been a vocal critic of the IOC and its president, Thomas Bach. The IBA was de-recognized after an IOC vote in June 2023.

"The boxers fully deserve to be governed by an international federation with integrity and transparency," Bach said at the time.

The consequences of that vote, though, have created a disparity in the way amateur boxing competitions are run and, it appears, their rules. While it is no longer involved at the Olympics, the IBA still controls its world championships, where the controversy erupted. 

"I don't think any of these organizations are models to look at when it comes to boxing," Dr. Joanna Harper, author of the book "Sporting Gender," told DW in an interview.

However, Harper cautioned that "bad actors" had attempted to gain political capital from the situation. "There are some people who are trying to make a political case that people who don't fit easily into the male-female divide are men, masquerading as women, trying to ruin women's sports. Those people have very bad intentions," she said.

When did the boxers fail their gender tests?

Khelif and Lin were both disqualified from the 2023 World Boxing Championships in New Delhi and subsequently suspended from future IBA events. The IBA decided that the pair had been ineligible to compete after undergoing gender tests, to uphold "the integrity of the competition."

At the time, Kremlev told Russian state news agency TASS that DNA testing of the two boxers had "proved that they have XY (male) chromosomes," and that they had "tried to deceive their colleagues and pretended to be women."

Khelif had beaten Russian boxer Azalia Amineva in the championship quarterfinals.

News of the failed gender tests went largely unnoticed in 2023 but was brought to wider attention just days before Khelif's first Olympic fight in Paris on Thursday.

What has the IBA said in Paris?

Speaking at a chaotic and at times contradictory press conference in Paris on Monday, Kremlev, who complained that female sport was being "destroyed", used coarse language to describe the nature of the tests.

"We didn't check what was between their legs," he said through an IBA-provided interpreter. "They have male levels of testosterone," a hormone that can increase muscle mass and strength. "We don't know if they were born like men or if some changes intervened [sic] at a later stage."

However, the IBA failed to shed light on why no action was taken against the two boxers when they were said to have failed gender tests for the first time at the 2022 World Boxing Championships in Istanbul, tests that were described as "conclusive" by Chris Roberts, the IBA's CEO.

Roberts, who said that the IBA couldn't disclose precise details of the tests for confidentiality reasons, added: "This was something new for us, one result coming from one laboratory. We were waiting for the next tournament to do the necessary blood testing."

Later, Roberts told DW: "We needed another test."

How has the IOC responded to the IBA?

The IOC has stressed that the boxers are not transgender and has sought to undermine the credibility of what it called the "arbitrary" tests, even suggesting that they had something to do with "not liking the results that had happened," apparently referring to Khelif's bout against Amineva. 

"We have no knowledge of what the tests were, they were cobbled together overnight," spokesperson Mark Adams said at the IOC's daily briefing on Friday. 

Adding to the confusion, though, the IOC had written on a media portal that Khelif had "elevated levels of testosterone." This information was later deleted, but the IOC acknowledged that it had been taken as "fact." 

Although their exact medical condition remains unclear, Harper said the two boxers "probably" have a difference of sexual development (DSD).

Some DSDs result in women having XY chromosomes. Depending on the DSD and how they react to testosterone, these women can display characteristics typical to males.

Why can the boxers compete in the female category?

The IOC has said the boxing competition in Paris is being conducted under exactly the same rules as the ones in Rio and Tokyo, where the sex listed on an athlete's passport is the key criteria.

Asked by DW if the IOC, knowing the situation with the gender tests, could have prevented the furor from occurring before the Olympics, Adams said a different question needed to be asked.

"Are these athletes women? The answer is yes, according to eligibility, according to their passports, according to their history," he said.

Those remarks were echoed by Bach at his press conference on Saturday.

"There was never any doubt about them being women," he said. "Some want to own the definition of who is a woman. We will not take part in a politically motivated cultural war." 

However, Harper said the IOC's policy doesn't look at the "significant" safety issue. 

"It's not clear with DSD athletes how much stronger they are on a pound-for-pound basis," she said. "And in the boxing world, the safety issue comes down to pound-for-pound strength, because you're putting together people of the same size. I would say if they had 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, which is one DSD, and haven't had testosterone suppression, I would have concerns."

What will happen next?

In the short term, both boxers will continue in their respective categories in the competition. "You cannot just come out and disqualify somebody and establish the rules afterwards," Christian Klaue, another IOC spokesperson, added on Friday.

In the longer term, the IOC may revisit its overall policy on gender eligibility, although Harper acknowledged that "there is no singular solution that is going to make everyone happy."

Boris van der Vorst, the president of World Boxing, which is positioning itself to take over as the sport's global body, told The Associated Press that his organization would always put "athletes' safety first" when it came to developing policies, but added that "when people are eligible to compete, we have to respect them."

Meanwhile, critics of Khelif's and Lin's participation in the female category have called for boxers to be sex tested, a practice that was stopped at the Olympics before the Sydney Games in 2000.

Minky Worden of Human Rights Watch has backed the IOC on this matter. "So-called 'sex tests' of women athletes and Olympians are unscientific, degrading, discredited, abusive and never happen to men," she said.

Edited by: Kalika Mehta

This is an updated version of an article first published on August 3, that incorporates an improved definition for DSDs, a more comprehensive version of an original quote from Dr. Joanna Harper regarding her concerns regarding DSD athletes competing in boxing and coverage of the IBA press conference on Monday, August 5.