The International Boxing Association (IBA) announced on August 5 that Algerian boxer Imane Khelif has been disqualified from the world championships after being identified as biologically male.
This revelation has intensified the ongoing gender debate at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
The controversy erupted when Italian boxer Angela Carini withdrew from a match after just 46 seconds, citing an unusually powerful hit that she feared had broken her nose.
Carini expressed concerns about her safety, describing the punch as unlike any she had experienced before.
Khelif, along with Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, had been previously disqualified from the 2023 women’s boxing world championships for failing gender eligibility tests.
Despite this, both boxers were allowed to participate in the Paris Olympics.
In a press conference held on August 5 in Paris, IBA officials detailed the tests conducted on Khelif and Lin, revealing abnormalities in blood tests from 2022 and subsequent karyotype results in 2023, which indicated a male genetic profile.
Former IBA medical committee chairman Ioannis Filippatos stated, “The medical result, blood result, looks — and the laboratory says — that this boxer is male. The problem is that we have two blood exams with karyotype of male. This is the answer from the laboratory,” as reported by AFP.
Algeria has strongly contested the IBA’s claims, defending Khelif’s right to compete and criticizing the handling of the situation amid the broader Olympic gender row.
