Boxers competing as women at Olympics failed tests elsewhere

Italian fighter Angela Carini on Thursday left her fight with Algerian boxer Imane Khelif less than a minute into the match after she said Khelif’s punch was too painful, she told Italian news agency ANSA. Italian politicians called the match unfair. Khelif and Taiwanese fighter Lin Yu-ting were both disqualified in 2023 from the International Boxing Association Women’s World Boxing Championships. Tests in 2022 and 2023 found the two did not meet the eligibility criteria to compete and had a competitive advantage over the other female athletes, the IBA said.

At the time, the IBA President Umar Kremlev told the Russian Tass News Agency that the athletes carried male XY chromosomes instead of the female XX chromosomes. Lin is scheduled to fight on Friday against Uzbekistan’s Sitora Turdibekova.

Why are they competing with women in Paris? The International Olympic Committee in June 2023 stripped the IBA of recognition and the group does not oversee Olympic qualification. IOC spokesman Mark Adams on Tuesday said that the two athletes had met the eligibility rules to participate in the women’s category. Neither of the boxers have claimed to be transgender. Algeria’s Olympic Committee said that claims that Khelif is a male are lies.

Have they competed in other women’s events? Khelif and Lin competed as women in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Lin won first place at the 2022 Asian Games and won bronze at the IBA World Championships last year but was later stripped of the title. Khelif won a silver medal at the IBA’s 2022 world championship, before the IBA’s test result that year was complete. 

Dig deeper: Read Catherine Gripp’s report about how the Olympics is juggling LGBTQ inclusion and fairness.