At the Olympic Games in Paris, a gender controversy has erupted around gold medal winner Imane Khelif. This now has consequences.
World Boxing is introducing mandatory gender testing to verify the eligibility of male and female athletes for its competitions. This was announced on Friday by the young world amateur boxing federation, which has been recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) since March.
Following the controversy surrounding the participation of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif in particular at the Olympic Games in Paris last summer, World Boxing announced that it had taken this decision in response to “concerns about the safety and well-being of all boxers, including Imane Khelif.”
Will Khelif undergo a gender test?
World Boxing further stated that the Algerian Boxing Federation had been informed that Khelif would have to undergo the test if she wanted to participate in the Eindhoven Box Cup in the Netherlands from June 5 to 10.
“World Boxing respects the dignity of all people and its top priority is to ensure safe and fair competition for all athletes,” the association added: “To achieve this, it is essential that strict gender categories are maintained and enforced. This means that World Boxing only holds competitions for athletes who are classified as male or female.”
The PCR test in question is a laboratory procedure for detecting specific genetic material, in this case the SRY gene. This indicates the presence of the Y chromosome, which serves as an indicator of biological sex. National federations are responsible for testing and must confirm the gender of their athletes (aged 18 and over) when registering for World Boxing competitions by submitting a certificate of chromosomal gender determined by a PCR test.
World Boxing was launched in 2023 against the backdrop of the conflict between the International Boxing Association (IBA, formerly AIBA) and the IOC. The IOC suspended the Russian-led IBA in 2019 for serious misconduct and expelled it in June 2023.
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Khelif and Lin Yuting from Taiwan were banned by the IBA from the 2023 World Championships for allegedly failing a testosterone test. However, they were allowed to compete in Paris because the IOC only considered the gender stated in their passports. Like Lin, Khelif won the gold medal in her weight class, accompanied by attacks and a disinformation campaign by conservative circles that portrayed her as a “man fighting against women.”
Kirsty Coventry, who was elected IOC president in March and took office on June 24, had announced that she would set up a task force on the difficult issue of transgender athletes in sport. No results have been announced yet. “We will protect the female category,” Coventry said after her election: “There will be a clear decision, and we will not back down.”
