Olympic boxing controversy: IBA fires back at IOC in chaotic news conference
PARIS — The saga of Olympic boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting has wound from rural Algeria and Chinese Taipei, through tournaments in Istanbul and New Delhi, to a boxing ring in the north of Paris, with a side journey through the cesspools of social media, and now … a shambolic, chaotic news conference in an ornate French wedding reception hall around the corner from a Hard Rock Cafe.
While Khelif and Lin are in the eye of this ever-expanding cultural storm, this story truly begins with the rift between the International Olympic Committee and the International Boxing Association, the regulatory authority once charged with organizing Olympic boxing. The IOC severed ties with the IBA in 2023 in a bitter dispute, and the reverberations of that separation led directly to the Khelif-Lin controversy. Both sides — the IOC and IBA — have attempted to present their narrative and defend their actions, and both have ended up looking ever more worse as the days of the Olympics have rolled on.
The IOC holds daily press briefings every morning. Ever since Khelif forced her opening-round opponent to retire just 46 seconds into their bout four days ago, IOC spokespeople have spent a significant portion of those briefings discussing the story … and, in no uncertain terms, criticizing the IBA, its operations and its people as “discredited” and “not legitimate.”
Monday afternoon, just 90 minutes after the IOC’s briefing ended in another part of Paris, the IBA took its turn. At the Salon De Mirrors — a mirror-walled hall that reflected images of cameras, journalists and IBA officials back and forth, infinitely — the IBA presented its side of the story, and ended up seriously damaging its credibility even as it answered key questions about the last two years.
In May 2022, the IBA conducted blood tests on four female boxers at an event in Istanbul after hearing concerns from “boxers, coaches, medical team, [and] ringside doctors,” according to IBA CEO Chris Roberts. Two of those boxers — Khelif and Lin — exhibited sufficiently concerning results that the organization again tested them in 2023, this time in New Delhi. Asked to clarify why the months-long distance between the tests, Roberts indicated that this was a question of access to the athletes: “This [issue] wasn’t something we were familiar with. We needed them to enter the [second] tournament and be officially in the tournament and then we could test them.”
Both fighters were disqualified from the 2023 competition after the tests, according to the IBA, revealed that both have XY chromosomes. Lin chose not to appeal. Khelif initially appealed, but later dropped her appeal.
Another speaker at the news conference, Gabriele Martelli, president of the IBA Coaches Committee, noted that the “unfair advantage” he said Khelif and Lin possess is particularly damaging in combat sports.
“If we lose because of an unfair advantage, we might be hurt emotionally, physically, because an advantage was used to take a medal from us,” he said. “But in our sport, it is different, it is dangerous; when there is an unfair advantage, someone can die.”
But the nuances are lost in a swirl of competing, and louder, forces, such as the incorrect assumption that the boxers are trans athletes; the IOC’s philosophical approach that prizes inclusivity as a driving force; the narrow definition of what does and what does not constitute a biological female; the political antagonism between the IOC and the IBA; and the maelstrom of social media hatred that both boxers have received. In such a tumultuous environment, it’s no wonder that all sides have dug in on their pre-established positions.
However, shortly after the IBA levied those suspensions in 2023, the IOC severed ties with the IBA over questions about the association’s leadership, judging, financial operations and ethics. With just over a year to go before the Paris Olympics, the IOC created its own ad hoc boxing governance unit, the Paris Boxing Unit.
In most instances, the athletic federation tasked with overseeing the sport — World Aquatics for swimming, for example — determines who and who isn’t qualified to compete in the Olympics, long before their case gets to the IOC, or the athlete to the Olympics. While the PBU administered the operations of the Olympics, it didn’t determine who was qualified to compete in them. The PBU’s own bylaws leave that to the individual country’s National Olympic Committees.
“Each NOC is responsible for ensuring that registered Boxers meet all eligibility requirements for all seven (7) Olympic Boxing Qualifying Tournaments and the Boxing Competition at the Olympic Games Paris 2024,” reads Rule 1.4.3 of the PBU’s regulations.
In other words, the IOC left the work of determining whether a boxer was qualified to compete to the NOCs, rather than to any sort of independent regulatory organization, as with other sports. This Olympics, the IOC has consistently indicated that when it comes to boxing it relies on the athlete’s passport, rather than any sort of genetic, hormonal or chromosome test, to determine gender classification.
The IBA scoffed at the idea of using a passport as evidence of gender.
“Our problem,” Dr. Ioannis Filippatos, the former chair of the IBA’s medical committee, said, “is that we have two blood exams with karyotype of men. This is the answer from laboratory. This is not my answer. This is answer from laboratory.”
The IBA sent the 2023 results to the IOC, which the IOC didn’t acknowledge until after that information surfaced Saturday in a report in 3 Wire Sports. However, the IOC has dismissed the entirety of the results because of its concerns about the reputation of the IBA, the tests’ source.
“I can't tell you if [the test results] were credible or not credible,” Adams said Monday, “because the source from which they came is not credible, and the basis for the question is not credible, and the test was not credible.”
While the IOC has potentially left some regulatory holes open in the run-up to these Games, several elements of the IBA’s story also cast doubt on that organization’s credibility. To start, the organization previously stated that “the athletes did not undergo a testosterone examination but were subject to a separate and recognized test, whereby the specifics remain confidential.” However, IBA president Umar Kremlev said during the Monday news conference, in Russian, that “‘we got the test results that they allowed us to take themselves and these tests show they have a high level of testosterone like a man. Man's level of testosterone.”
That doesn’t even begin to touch the chaos of the Monday news conference, in which Kremlev spent nearly 19 straight minutes pontificating on the Opening Ceremony, the alleged corruption of the IOC and president Thomas Bach, and other matters far afield from the issue at hand. Given the opportunity to present its case and best face to the world media, many affiliated with the IBA instead chose to air grievances and voice complaints that drowned out all substantive and necessary answers to key questions.
One such question still floating over this entire controversy is whether the 2022 and 2023 tests that the IBA administered are legitimate. The IOC continues to dismiss the tests on their face without giving any substantive reason why, beyond a total distrust of, and disregard for, the tests’ source. The IBA, meanwhile, had its chance Monday to address the IOC’s criticisms and prove the validity of the tests. It failed to do so, drowning the story in a sea of unrelated grievances.
Khelif is scheduled to fight on Tuesday night in the 66kg semifinal. Lin is scheduled to fight Wednesday in the 57kg semifinal. Both have already guaranteed themselves a medal in these Olympics.
