What to know about the gender controversy sweeping Olympic boxing

NPR is in Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympics. For more of our coverage from the Games, head to our latest updates.

Women’s boxing is at the center of the latest Olympics controversy as critics take issue with the participation of two athletes — Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan — who have failed gender eligibility tests in the past.

Both Khelif and Lin identify and have long competed as women, but were disqualified from the 2023 women’s world championships by the International Boxing Association (IBA) for what it called failure to meet “eligibility rules.”

Olympic organizers are defending their right to compete in Paris and questioning the validity of those unspecified tests and the fairness of their previous disqualification, which they said happened without due process.

“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,” the International Olympic Committee said in a statement Thursday.

The conservative outcry started after Khelif won her match against Angela Carini of Italy on Thursday in somewhat dramatic fashion.

Carini quit just 46 seconds into the bout after Khelif’s punches dislodged her chinstrap and bloodied her shorts. After deciding to withdraw, she fell to her knees sobbing in the ring and refused to shake hands with Khelif.

“I have never been hit so hard in my life,” Carini tearfully told reporters afterward.

She said she had stopped fighting because of nose pain, but also said it wasn’t her place to pass judgment on whether Khelif should compete.

“If an athlete is this way, and in that sense it’s not right or it is right, it’s not up to me to decide,” Carini added.

Khelif didn’t speak to the media other than a quick comment to BBC Sport: “I'm here for the gold — I fight everybody."

She is set to return to the ring Saturday for a quarterfinal matchup against Hungary’s Anna Luca Hamori.

Hamori has accepted the fight, saying she is “not scared” of Khelif. But the Hungarian Boxing Association is striking a different tone: The Associated Press reported on Friday that the organization is sending “letters of protest” about the matchup to the IOC and Hungary’s own Olympic committee.

On Friday, Lin emerged victorious in her preliminary-round fight against Uzbekistan’s Sitora Turdibekova, winning 5-0 by unanimous decision but without much fanfare in the crowd.

She is headed to the quarterfinals on Sunday, one victory away from her first Olympic medal.

Who is Lin?

Lin, 28, a two-time world champion, has been competing for over a decade.

According to her Olympic bio, Lin joined an athletics team as a child “to achieve good results in athletics and win awards to help out financially.” She switched to boxing in middle school.

She made her Olympic debut at the Tokyo Games, though left without a medal.

Still, the southpaw has won many other titles — including bronze in featherweight at the 2019 Women’s World Boxing Championships, gold at bantamweight in 2018 and gold in featherweight in 2022.

She also won a bronze medal at the 2023 world championships, but lost it after she was disqualified. It went to the opponent she had defeated in the quarterfinals, Bulgaria’s Svetlana Kamenova Staneva.

Who is Khelif?

Khelif, at 25 years old and 5’10”, has been competing since 2018. She entered Paris with a 9-5 professional record, according to the New York Times. 

She made her first Olympic appearance at the Tokyo Games in 2021, where she lost in the quarterfinal round to Ireland’s Kellie Harrington (and didn’t face any false allegations about her gender at the time, as many of her defenders are now noting).

Khelif won the African and Mediterranean Championships in 2022 and reached the final of the IBA Women’s World Championships that same year. She took home silver, after a defeat by another Irish boxer, Katie Broadhurst.

Khelif also reached the finals of the 2023 world championships in New Delhi but was disqualified by organizers the day before they began in March.

Why were the athletes disqualified last year?

The IBA said in a statement at the time that Khelif and Lin had “failed to meet eligibility rules, following a test conducted by an independent laboratory.”

IBA President Umar Krevlev told Russian state media that it was “proven they have XY chromosomes” — which is seen in men, as opposed to the XX genotype of women.

It is medically possible for women to have male chromosomes, in rare cases. Separately, there are a number of health conditions — most notably, polycystic ovary syndrome — that can cause women to produce excess male hormones.

In a new statement released this week, the IBA clarified that Khelif and Lin had not undergone a testosterone exam, but were “subject to a separate and recognized test, whereby the specifics remain confidential.”

“This test conclusively indicated that both athletes did not meet the required necessary eligibility criteria and were found to have competitive advantages over other female competitors,” they wrote.

Why are they eligible for the Olympics?

The IBA is no longer the governing body of Olympic boxing.

The IOC — which had already overseen boxing competitions for the Tokyo Olympics — officially voted to derecognize it in June 2023, after a years-long dispute over the integrity of its bouts and judging and transparency of management.

Olympic officials took issue with how presidents from Uzbekistan and Russia ran the IBA, as well as the fact that its sole sponsor was a Russian state energy firm, according to the Associated Press.

The IOC has repeatedly defended the athletes’ right to compete in Paris, casting doubt on the process that disqualified them last year and pointing to their female legal identities.

“They are women in their passports and it’s stated that this is the case, that they are female,” spokesperson Mark Adams told reporters earlier this week. Notably, there is no right to change one’s legal gender under Algerian law.

In its Thursday statement, the IOC confirmed that all athletes participating in the boxing tournament “comply with the competition’s eligibility and entry regulations, as well as all applicable medical regulations.” It said it used the Tokyo boxing rules as the baseline for this year’s regulations.

It called Khelif and Lin, whom it did not identify by name, “the victims of a sudden arbitrary decision by the IBA.”

The IOC said it is “saddened by the abuse that the two athletes are currently receiving,” and stressed the need for National Boxing Federations to “reach a consensus around a new International federation” for boxing to be included in the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

On Friday, spokesperson Adams reminded reporters that the IOC stopped blanket sex testing in 1999, and that “even if there were a sex test that everyone agreed with, I don’t think anyone wants to see a return to some of the scenes.” He acknowledged that the situation has become a minefield.

“And unfortunately, as with all minefields, we want a simple explanation,” he added. “Everyone wants a black-and-white explanation of how we can determine this. That explanation does not exist, neither in the scientific community, nor anywhere else.”

For more about sex testing in elite women’s sports, check out the new podcast Tested, from NPR and the CBC.

What are critics and supporters saying?

After Khelif’s win, the backlash was swift, especially in conservative circles.

Author J.K. Rowling — who has been criticized for her transphobic views in recent years — falsely labeled her a man, in a tweet that has garnered over 400,000 likes. Former President Donald Trump shared a video of the match on Truth Social, writing in all caps, “I WILL KEEP MEN OUT OF WOMEN’S SPORTS!”

Riley Gaines, a widely-followed former collegiate swimmer who describes herself as a “leader defending women’s single-sex spaces,” tweeted that “men don’t belong in women’s sports.” Tesla CEO Elon Musk amplified her tweet, adding, “Absolutely.”

Vlogger-turned-WWE wrestler Logan Paul also slammed Khelif as a man, tweeting that the match was “the purest form of evil unfolding right before your eyes.” He later deleted his post and wrote, “I might be guilty of spreading misinformation along with the entirety of this app.”

Foreign officials have also weighed in.

Italy’s far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni told the Italian news agency ANSA that the fight between Carini and Khelif was unfair.

"I think that athletes who have male genetic characteristics should not be admitted to women's competitions," she said, according to Reuters. "And not because you want to discriminate against someone, but to protect the right of female athletes to be able to compete on equal terms."

Italy's family and sports ministers have also voiced concerns about the lack of clarity around gender eligibility criteria, suggesting that uniform international criteria would assuage “suspicion” and protect athletes’ safety.

Algeria's Olympic committee is defending Khelif, issuing a statement on Wednesday condemning what it called her “unethical targeting” with “baseless propaganda.”

“Such attacks on her personality and dignity are deeply unfair, especially as she prepares for the pinnacle of her career at the Olympics,” it added, per Reuters.

Meanwhile, Taiwanese officials have thrown their support behind Lin.

Pan Men-an, secretary-general for Taiwan’s presidential office, said on social media that it is wrong for the athlete to be "subjected to humiliation, insults and verbal bullying just because of your appearance and a controversial verdict in the past."

Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan's first female president, wrote on X that Lin is “an athlete who is fearless in the face of challenges, whether they come from inside or outside the ring.”