Boxing at Paris 2024 has been overshadowed by a row about
the eligibility of two fighters in the women’s competition.
Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting are
guaranteed at least bronze medals.
But last year they were disqualified from the World
Championships.
The body that oversaw that 2023 event is the International
Boxing Association (IBA) and it says both fighters failed gender eligibility
tests.
On Monday the IBA will hold a news conference to give a
“detailed explanation of the reasons for the disqualification”.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has cast doubt on
the reliability of the tests and suggested what is happening is a “sometimes
politically motivated cultural war”.
In June 2023, the IOC stripped the IBA of
its status as the sport’s world governing body over concerns over how it was
run.
So, what is going on?
What is the IBA?
The IBA, formerly known as AIBA, was formed in 1946 as a
worldwide governing body for amateur boxing. The IOC recognised the IBA as the
sport’s governing body until 2019.
Why did the IOC stop recognising the IBA?
The IOC suspended the IBA in 2019.
This was because of governance issues and alleged
corruption.
It led to the threat that boxing would be removed from the
Olympics altogether from 2028.
What were some of the concerns?
In 2018, the IBA issued life bans to
ex-president CK Wu and former executive director Ho Kim after a report
documented "gross negligence and financial mismanagement of affairs and
finances".
Wu had been in charge for 11 years before being
provisionally suspended in October 2017.
Wu was replaced as AIBA president by Gafur Rakhimov, who was
described by the US Treasury Department as "one of Uzbekistan's leading
criminals".
Then in 2020 Russian Umar Kremlev was elected president.
In 2022, an independent investigation said boxing needed to
take action on ethical issues to secure its Olympic future, having found a
"historical culture of bout manipulation" - including at the 2016 Rio
Olympic Games.
In his
final report, Professor Richard McLaren detailed decades of financial
mismanagement and deception, rule breaking in the ring, and inadequate training
and education programmes for referees, judges and officials.
Who is current IBA president Umar Kremlev?
Kremlev is seen as having close ties to the Kremlin. Under
his leadership, the IBA has had Russian state-backed energy giant Gazprom among
its chief sponsors.
In May 2022, Kremlev was re-elected unopposed after
Dutch boxing federation president Boris van der Vorst was declared ineligible.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) later said that Van
der Vorst was wrongly prevented from standing, but a proposal to stage a new
election was rejected by IBA delegates.
The IOC said it was "extremely concerned" by the
result, while Van der Vorst said he feared for the sport's Olympic future.
What was the background to the 2023 IBA World
Championships?
The 2023 World Championships were held in two countries. The
women’s was in India in March and the men’s in Uzbekistan in April and May.
A total of 19 countries, including Great Britain and the
USA, boycotted
the events after the IBA allowed Russian and Belarusian boxers to
compete under their countries' flags, contravening IOC guidance following the
invasion of Ukraine.
Kremlev said those boycotting the championships were
"worse than hyenas and jackals" because of their violation of the
"integrity of sport and culture".
At the time, GB Boxing said of its decision to boycott the
championships that the flags issues had “put further distance between IBA and
the Olympic movement in addition to the significant, longstanding issues over
sporting integrity, governance, transparency and financial management which the
IOC has asked IBA to address to protect boxing's place on the Olympic
programme”.
What happened at the 2023 Worlds?
At the 2023 World Championships, Khelif was competing in the
welterweight category and Lin at featherweight.
Hours before her gold-medal match against China’s Yang Liu,
the IBA said Khelif had failed a gender eligibility test.
Khelif had beaten Janjaem Suwannapheng from Thailand in the
semi-final, Uzbekistan’s Navbakhor Khamidova in the quarter-final and Russia’s
Azalia Amineva in the round prior to that.
As a result of Khelif’s disqualification, 21-year-old
Amineva had the only loss in her now 22-fight career removed from the record.
At the same 2023 World Championships, Lin was stripped of a
bronze medal by the IBA.
The IBA said the fighters had "failed to meet the
eligibility criteria for participating in the women's competition, as set and
laid out in the IBA regulations".
What do we know about the tests?
The OceanNewsUK has, as yet, been unable to determine what the
eligibility tests consisted of. It is not known how tests were overseen.
In an interview with OceanNewsUK editor Dan Roan on Thursday,
IBA chief executive Chris Roberts said male XY chromosomes were found in
"both cases".
Roberts said there were "different strands involved in
that" and therefore the body could not commit to referring to the fighters
as "biologically male".
He said the unspecified eligibility tests had been conducted
as a result of “ongoing concerns” raised by other fighters, coaches and the
IBA’s medical committee.
The IOC has raised doubts over the accuracy of the tests.
"We don't know what the protocol was, we don't know
whether the test was accurate, we don't know whether we should believe the
test," said IOC spokesperson Mark Adams.
"There's a difference between a test taking place and
whether we accept the accuracy or even the protocol of the test."
What has been the IOC and IBA reaction to the 2023 tests
this week?
In a statement on Thursday, the IOC said that Khelif and Lin
had been "victims of a sudden and arbitrary decision by the IBA".
"Towards the end of the IBA World Championships in
2023, they were suddenly disqualified without any due process," the IOC
said.
"According to the IBA minutes available on their
website, this decision was initially taken solely by the IBA secretary general
and CEO. The IBA board only ratified it afterwards and only subsequently
requested that a procedure to follow in similar cases in the future be
established and reflected in the IBA regulations. The minutes also say that the
IBA should 'establish a clear procedure on gender testing'.
"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.
"Such an approach is contrary to good governance."
The IBA insisted its decision was "necessary to uphold
the level of fairness and utmost integrity of the competition".
It said in a statement earlier this week: "The athletes
did not undergo a testosterone examination but were subject to a separate and
recognised 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."
The IBA said Lin did not ultimately appeal against the IBA's
decision to Cas, while Khelif withdrew an appeal, "thus rendering the
decisions legally binding".
What happened to the IBA after the 2023 World
Championships?
In June 2023, 69 of 70 Olympic federations voted to strip
the IBA of its status.
Before the vote, IOC president Thomas Bach said: "We do
not have a problem with boxing. We do not have a problem with boxers.
"The boxers fully deserve to be governed by an
international federation with integrity and transparency."
In response, the IBA accused the IOC of making a
"tremendous error" and compared the move to Germany's actions in the
Second World War.
An IBA statement read: "We have successfully
implemented all recommendations outlined by the IOC in its roadmap.
"Despite the challenges, the IBA remains committed to
the development of boxing and the organisation of official tournaments and
world boxing championships at the highest level.
"We cannot conceal the fact that today's decision is
catastrophic for global boxing and blatantly contradicts the IOC's claims of
acting in the best interests of boxing and athletes."
Cas rejected an appeal by the IBA against the decision.
A new governing body for Olympic boxing?
A new body, World Boxing, was set up in April 2023.
Among five pledges, the new organisation says it will
"keep boxing at the heart of the Olympic movement" and "ensure
the interests of boxers are put first".
One of its key goals is maintaining boxing as an Olympic
sport after it was provisionally
dropped from the 2028 Games over the IBA issues.
However, it remains in discussions with the IOC to get
recognition as the worldwide governing body for the sport.
It is backed by representatives from Great Britain, Germany,
the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, Sweden and the United States.
The IBA has previously said it "strongly condemns"
the establishment of a "rogue" organisation, adding it has
"initiated a series of actions to protect its autonomy as the official
worldwide governing body".
How has boxing at the Olympics been governed amid all
this?
Unlike previous Games, boxing at the Tokyo Olympics was
organised by the IOC rather than the IBA.
In 2019, the IOC delegated responsibility for the
organisation and management of doping control at the Olympics to the
International Testing Agency (ITA).
The IOC said it took a "zero-tolerance policy" to
anyone found using or providing doping products.
Tests include, but are not excluded to, determining an
athlete's levels of testosterone.
What is the IOC’s position on eligibility for women’s
sport?
In late 2021 the IOC issued new guidance on transgender
athletes in women’s sport.
This placed the responsibility on individual federations to
determine eligibility criteria in their sport.
The framework came in the aftermath of Tokyo 2020 when
weightlifter Laurel Hubbard became the first transgender athlete to compete at
the Olympics in a different gender category to that in which they were born.
While the IOC said there should be no assumption that a
transgender athlete automatically has an unfair advantage in female events, it
issued a 10-point document that it expected every sport to apply before Paris
2024.
Since then many sports have banned transgender women from
taking part in women’s sport, such as athletics, aquatics and both rugby codes.
However, the rules have been applied differently so there
are sports in which transgender women or athletes with differences of sex
development (DSD) can compete.
Boxing is one of those as the IOC, which has been overseeing
Olympic boxing, has not updated the eligibility criteria rules since Tokyo
2020.
The IOC said it "supports the participation of any
athlete who has qualified and met the eligibility criteria to compete in the
Olympic Games as established by their IF (international federation). The IOC
will not discriminate against an athlete who has qualified through their IF, on
the basis of their gender identity and/or sex characteristics."
How did Khelif and Lin’s test results come to light?
Both cases had been reported on last year around the World
Championships, although not widely in Europe or the US given the boycotts of
the event.
The IOC included the details on the media information portal
before Paris 2024, although that was later removed.
Given heightened scrutiny around women’s sport and
transgender athletes or people with DSD, media picked up on the IOC saying
athletes who had failed the tests were due to compete in the women’s division.
Since then the IOC has insisted the fighters were “born
women and raised women”, but the IBA has continued to insist its tests suggest
their eligibility for women’s boxing is in question.
What next?
The IBA is holding its news conference on Monday when
further details may emerge of the tests from the 2023 World Championships.
Khelif and Lin are due to have their semi-final bouts on
Tuesday and Wednesday respectively, when they could move within one fight of a
potential gold medal.
