Questions of Gender Amid Russia-West Tensions in the World of Boxing

Imane Khelif (R) of Team Algeria interacts with Anna Luca Hamori of Team Hungary after the Women's 66kg quarter-final round match on day 8 of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at North Paris Arena in Paris, France, on Aug. 3, 2024. (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)

As viewers and competitors celebrate medal triumphs, personal bests, and Olympic records, the 2024 Paris Olympics hasn’t been without its controversies, including one involving just two of the more than 11,000 athletes participating.

Boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting have been caught in an ongoing dispute between Russia and the West for control of the sport, with issues over their gender and eligibility raised as part of this conflict.

In 2019, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) suspended the International Boxing Association (IBA) in an attempt to force it to change its operations due to concerns about financial mismanagement and leadership issues.

When that didn’t happen, it voted 69-1 (with 10 abstentions) to cease recognising the IBA as amateur boxing’s governing body.

In response, the IBA accused the IOC of making a “tremendous error.”

Issues With Gender Testing

Meanwhile, in 2022, Algerian boxer Khelif was disqualified three days after she won an early-round bout against Azalia Amineva, a Russian fighter with a previously unbeaten record.

The disqualification meant Amineva’s unbeaten status remained intact.

The IBA said Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin hadn’t met “the necessary eligibility criteria” and were found to have “competitive advantages over other female competitors” after failing to meet unspecified eligibility tests. Both boxers competed in IBA tournaments for years before their abrupt disqualification.

Despite having no recognised standing in the sport—and certainly not at an Olympic level—the IBA highlighted the issue when both boxers competed in Paris this year.

Additionally, it announced it would offer prize money totalling US$3.1 million to medal winners at the Paris Games, despite the fact that most national boxing federations are no longer members.

It also offered to give $50,000 to Angela Carini, the Italian fighter who quit her bout with Kehlif, along with $25,000 each to her coach and Italy’s national boxing federation, which has refused what it calls the “hypothetical offer.”

Algeria's Imane Khelif (in red) punches Italy's Angela Carini in the women's 66kg preliminaries round of 16 boxing match during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the North Paris Arena, in Villepinte on Aug. 1, 2024. (Mohd Rasfan/AFP via Getty Images)

Any attempt to have the IBA explain the nature of its eligibility tests has been met with obfuscation.

The association’s CEO, Chris Roberts, stated that male XY chromosomes were found in “both cases” but that there were “different strands involved in that” and therefore, the IBA would not refer to the fighters as “biologically male.”

Problems Come Olympic Time

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,” its spokesperson Mark Adams said.

In the meantime, Olympic boxing is being managed directly by an administration within the IOC, which has decided to opt out of setting gender eligibility rules for any sport after undertaking a two-year review of the subject.

Instead, it has given decision-making authority to the governing bodies of each sport. As a result, swimming, athletics and cycling all moved to develop their own gender policies.

Broadly, they forbid anyone who has been through male puberty from competing as a woman at an international level.

With no replacement for the IBA yet recognised, boxers need only conform to the IOC’s broad statement of principle.

It states that “no athlete should be precluded from competing or excluded from competition on the exclusive ground of an unverified, alleged or perceived unfair competitive advantage due to their sex variations, physical appearance and/or transgender status.”

So, between the IBA’s unspecified tests and the IOC’s lack of any real policy, Khelif and Lin are left without any way to assert their right to compete, and their opponents are denied a standard against which their participation can be evaluated.

Years of Turmoil at the Top of the Boxing World

The IOC’s withdrawal of its recognition of the IBA was just the culmination of a long-running series of events involving boxing’s governing body.

In 2016—the last Olympics in which the IBA had official status—Irish fighter Michael Conlan accused it of corruption after losing a decision to a Russian.

The IBA suspended all referees and judges involved in the Olympic tournament and admitted some decisions were “not at the level expected,” but the results stood.

Former President Ching-kuo Wu had run the IBA for 11 years before being provisionally suspended in October 2017, then issued with a life ban—along with former Executive Director Ho Kim—after a report documented alleged “gross negligence and financial mismanagement of affairs and finances.”

In the chaos, staff were locked out of the organisation’s headquarters. Concerned by the infighting and opaque finances, the IOC stopped payments, worsening the boxing group’s financial crisis.

The following year, the presidency was won by Gafur Rakhimov, who the U.S. Treasury Department described as “one of Uzbekistan’s leading criminals” for his alleged involvement in heroin trafficking. Rakhimov denied any wrongdoing and vowed to clear the organisation’s debts.

He was then replaced by an associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Umar Kremlev.

Kremlev came to power and offered to clear the IBA’s $16 million debts if the sport’s Olympic status was retained.

Kremlev has been head of the Russian Boxing Federation since 2017 and has brought Russian state-backed energy giant Gazprom on board as a major sponsor.

An attempt to replace him with Dutch boxing federation president Boris Van Der Vorst in 2022 failed after the challenger was declared ineligible.

Even though the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that Van Der Vorst was wrongly prevented from standing, a proposal to stage a new election was rejected by IBA delegates.

The IOC said it was “extremely concerned” by that result, while Van Der Vorst said he feared for boxing’s future as an Olympic sport.

Allegations of Threats

Then, in 2023, the World Championships were held under IBA auspices.

A total of 19 countries, including the UK and United States, 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.

That provoked an angry response from Kremlev, who said the countries boycotting the championships were “worse than hyenas and jackals.”

He was also accused by the IOC of using “violent and threatening language” against a number of its officials during the American Boxing Confederation Continental Forum in Brasilia that year.

In response, the IOC said the derogatory language against the IOC organisation and its employees by IBA leadership was “simply unacceptable.”

“Making accusations against them that they are ‘covering up crimes’ is highly defamatory,” the IOC said in a statement.

“Furthermore, calling for an individual formerly linked to the IOC to be ’shot' is a language that has no place in sport or in any normal civilised debate,” the statement added.

Roughly three dozen federations have left the IBA in the past two years to form World Boxing, a new governing body hoping to replace the IBA in the next Olympic cycle.