Gender controversy in Olympic boxing: IOC leaves questions unanswered, sparks wildfire of speculation

PARIS — The question of whether boxers Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Chinese Taipei will be allowed to participate in the Olympic Games is not as clear-cut as many critics claim.

Nor is it as clear-cut as the International Olympic Committee claims in its defense.

What is undeniably known is that so much is still unknown. The blame for this lies with the IOC, which entered this controversy seemingly blind to the facts and was therefore misled when a worldwide controversy erupted.

Two things could be happening here.

Either there are two fighters in the women’s boxing match with an unfair advantage, or at least they have been previously disqualified by the International Boxing Association for what they saw as an unfair advantage. Or two innocent fighters are being unfairly attacked and harassed to the extreme.

There will be no solution here that satisfies everyone, especially when the issue has been such a political success worldwide for different parties on all sides of the debate.

Yet the IOC should have seen all this coming and should have had more information than they admitted.

The IOC has the widest reach and the most resources to get the full story here and then to get it out to the public. It is also the organization that is responsible for a final verdict — whatever that may be.

But amid a feud with the IBA, the IOC admits it doesn’t even know what, how or why the IBA ever tested the two fighters, let alone why they “failed” two unspecified tests to determine their gender at both the 2022 and 2023 world championships.

So everyone is only telling half the story and the IOC is angry that the flood of speculation is overshadowing the Games.

Let’s start with something IOC spokesman Mark Adams is adamant about. Khelif, who on Thursday took just 46 seconds to overpower Italy’s Angela Carini to spark this fire, is not a transgender athlete, which makes the situation all the more intense.

“The Algerian boxer was born a woman, was registered as a woman, lived her life as a woman, boxed as a woman, has a woman’s passport,” Adams said. “This is not a transgender case. There has been some confusion that this is a man fighting a woman. That is simply not the case. There is consensus on that. Scientifically, this is not a man fighting a woman.”

What’s left is where everything gets confusing, often in ways you wouldn’t think would be confusing. Is this about testosterone? Is this about chromosomes? Is this about something else?

At the heart of the matter is the IBA disqualifying boxers from the 2023 World Championships in New Delhi, India, for “failing to meet eligibility requirements.” Khelif, from Algeria, was banned from the final just hours before the bout.

An analysis of the minutes of the IBA decision reveals the following:

“The IBA Secretary General and CEO explained that the tests were carried out at the request of the Technical Delegate and the Medical Jury of the Championships. The results were available within seven days… (the IBA) immediately informed the athletes of their disqualification…

“Mr. (George A.) Yerolimpos confirmed that similar tests were conducted by another independent laboratory on the same athletes during the previous edition of the IBA Women’s World Boxing Championships in Istanbul, Turkey in 2022. However, the results were only received after the event, so the athletes were not disqualified at that time.”

The IBA minutes reveal that the athletes could not be tested before their arrival in India for the 2023 World Championships because they were “beyond the control of the IBA”.

So that’s two ‘tests’ in two years.

The IOC website originally reported that the boxers had been disqualified due to “elevated testosterone,” though that has since been removed from their online Olympic bios. However, IBA President Umar Kremlev told Russia’s Tass news agency last year that the disqualifications were because “it was proven that they have XY chromosomes.”

From the IBA minutes: “Mr Yerolimpos confirmed that the IBA has available results from two independent laboratories in two different countries, both of which indicate that the athletes do not meet one of the eligibility criteria to continue participating in the Championships.”

However, the IOC stripped the IBA of its status as the world governing body for boxing years ago due to governance problems and judging scandals. As such, the IBA is not responsible for Olympic boxing competition. That task has fallen to the IOC, which, perhaps clouded by its feud with the IBA, is skeptical of the governing body.

As such, the IOC does not honor the IBA’s decisions. It cites uneven procedures and uncertainties about what the tests actually were. Adams repeated himself repeatedly during a press conference in Paris on Friday morning.

“We don’t know what the protocol was, we don’t know if the test was accurate, we don’t know if we should believe the test,” he said.

“A test that was perhaps done overnight, a made-up test, that was new, I don’t think we should give any credence to that,” he added later.

“As for the tests themselves, we don’t know what the tests were,” he said for the third time. “They were cobbled together, as I understand it, to change the results.”

Well, go find out what those were.

Let’s say the IBA process was completely unfair and corrupt and should be condemned. If so, figure it out and argue for it, because if that’s the case, then the IOC is doing enormous and unfair damage to Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting by just shrugging its shoulders.

Leaving questions unanswered creates a vacuum of mistrust.

Adams seemed more irritated by the fact that the IBA appeared to rewrite its rules halfway through the 2023 World Championships.

“It’s clear, and I think everyone would agree, that you don’t change the rules in the middle of a game; no one should change the rules in the middle of a game,” Adams said. “Everyone should have certainty in the middle of a game.”

Ideally, but what if the IBA, hypothetically, found that one of the two fighters’ opponents had an unfair — and, given boxing, unsafe — disadvantage? Wouldn’t it be right to intervene immediately?

“(Khelif) has fought in this sport for many, many years against many opponents, including Italian boxers in the last few years,” Adams noted, which is important.

They are both veterans in women’s boxing, including at the Olympics, and don’t win all their matches. Khelif has fought other Italian opponents in the past. So why is this suddenly a problem?

Mainly because the IOC has dismissed the IBA’s findings — or at least isn’t curious — about whatever the IBA has found. Instead of getting the full facts from the IBA so they know the protocols, the types of tests, and the reasons behind them — and then either honor them or publicly explain why they shouldn’t be honored — they’re using their lack of knowledge as a crutch in deciding that this isn’t a big deal.

Maybe the two boxers should fight; USA Boxing, for example, said it has no concerns and “confidence” in the IOC’s qualification process. Maybe they shouldn’t.

However, a person should know the whole story before making that decision.

That is the job of the IOC. And it has failed miserably.