What’s behind a global social media pile-on in Olympic women’s boxing

Australia World

If you’ve been watching the Paris Olympics or reading about it online, it’s highly likely you’ve seen the names Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting or heard rumblings of some kind of gender-based dispute in the women’s boxing competition.

What started as athletes attempting to compete in their chosen sport has spiralled into a story that now involves a Russia-linked official, a global social media pile-on, huge amounts of mis- and disinformation and anti-trans activists jumping in.

So what are the facts and what questions are there still left to answer? ABC NEWS Verify has put on boxing gloves and entered the proverbial ring.

Who are Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting?

Both Lin (left) and Khelif (right) have competed in Olympic boxing before Paris.(Reuters: Peter Cziborra/AP: John Locher)

Imane Khelif is a 25-year-old professional boxer from Algeria. She competed without controversy in the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics where she was defeated in the quarterfinal stage. In April 2024 she won the women’s welterweight event at the World Boxing Cup in Colorado.

Lin Yu-ting is a 28-year-old professional boxer from Taiwan. She also competed in Tokyo where she finished equal ninth. She won gold in 2018 at the International Boxing Association’s (IBA) World Championships in 2018.

They’re both in the news at the moment due to unfounded questions about their biological sex.

What is their biological sex?

Female boxer stands in the ring and looks at camera

The controversy erupted after Imane Khelif (right) beat Italian boxer Angela Carini.(AP: John Locher)

We don’t have access to any definitive blood tests or chromosomal tests (although neither do J.K. Rowling or Donald Trump — more on that later) but what we do know is that the two women’s biological sex only appears to have become a question or an issue in 2023.

Khelif’s family has recently presented evidence to Reuters that she was born female and has a female passport. She is recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as a female athlete, is not transgender and does not identify as intersex according to queer rights media advocacy organisation GLAAD.

According to reporting from Taiwan, Lin’s documents indicate she was also born a female. The reporting also states she has always competed as a woman and had a “thorough” examination by Taiwanese officials. ABC NEWS Verify has not been able to independently confirm these reports.

So why are people now saying they’re biologically men or transgender?

On March 24, 2023, Khelif was disqualified from the World Championships in New Delhi only days after she won a bout against the previously unbeaten Russian boxer Azalia Amineva and just before she was due to contest the final.

The IBA declared Khelif and Lin had failed tests conducted during the IBA World Championships in 2022 and 2023 and, as such, failed to “meet the eligibility criteria for participating in the women’s competition, as set and laid out in the IBA Regulations”.

IBA president Umar Kremlev told Russian state-owned news agency Tass that the testing showed the athletes had XY (generally male) chromosomes and not XX (generally female) chromosomes, but to date he has not publicly released test results or evidence to support this claim.

It’s worth noting that the IBA itself has not publicly disclosed exactly what tests the pair allegedly failed, saying “… the athletes did not undergo a testosterone examination but were subject to a separate and recognised test, whereby the specifics remain confidential”.

Khelif took silver and Lin took gold in their respective weight categories at the 2022 World Championships after the first testing allegedly took place. The IBA also published an article months after the 2022 testing, promoting Khelif as a woman boxer.

In a statement released after first publication of this article, the IBA said that this one test was “not enough to make a decision with respective consequences” and that lawyers advised them to “monitor the situation and to contact the IOC”.

The statement said the results of the tests “constitute medical information protected as personal data” and could not be publicly released without consent from the tested boxers, but that both of them had received a copy of their test results.

Olympic organisers have dismissed the IBA’s testing, asserting that “those tests are not legitimate tests. The tests themselves, the process of the tests, the ad hoc nature of the tests are not legitimate”.

One sticking point for those making a case against both women is that the IBA claims Khelif “withdrew an appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), making the IBA decision legally binding” and Lin “did not appeal the IBA’s decision”.

The association’s more recent statement claimed that the CAS “terminated the proceedings because the appellant did not pay the costs of the proceedings”.

ABC NEWS Verify could find no evidence of a CAS appeal or a withdrawal from either Khelif or Lin.

Who is Umar Kremlev and what is the IBA?

A man sits holding a microphone at a table and is talking

Umar Kremlev has been the head of the IBA since 2020.(X: Supplied)

Mr Kremlev was formerly the secretary-general of the Boxing Federation of Russia and became the president of the IBA in 2020. Russian investigative reporting suggests he also has significant control of the gambling and sports betting market in Russia.

The same reporting, which ABC NEWS Verify has been unable to independently check, also states that he has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Mr Kremlev has a long-running feud with the IOC and has been condemned by the organisation for using “violent and threatening language” against members at a public event.

The IBA was originally formed in 1920 as the International Amateur Boxing Federation and has been embroiled in controversy for several years. In 2019 the IOC suspended recognition of the association over governance, finance, refereeing and ethical issues. In June last year the IOC banned the IBA from Olympic involvement.

Under Mr Kremlev, the IBA signed a “major sponsorship deal” with Russian energy giant Gazprom.

A new rival governing body — World Boxing — has been formed and is hoping to take over governance of Olympic boxing. It’s an alliance of several dozen nations that broke away from the IBA after an internal power struggle, as reported by Reuters, failed to get rid of Mr Kremlev.

In August 2023 Boxing Australia announced it had left the IBA and formally joined World Boxing.

The IOC has disputed the basis for and veracity of the test results.

“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,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams said on Friday.

“There’s a difference between a test taking place and whether we accept the accuracy or even the protocol of the test,” Mr Adams said.

So to summarise: the IBA’s test results can’t be independently verified, the IOC disputes them and has separately banned the IBA from having anything to do with the Olympics.

Why has this blown up now at the Paris Games?

Khelif won her first Paris bout on Thursday when her Italian opponent, Angela Carini, emotionally quit after just 46 seconds.

Even though Carini said she wasn’t making a political statement about Khelif, she refused to shake Khelif’s hand after the fight.

Carini has reportedly since apologised and said she “regretted” not shaking hands with Khelif but her tearful abandonment of the bout has become a worldwide sensation on social media.

The IBA has since offered $US50,000 ($77,637) in prize money to Carini and another $US50,000 to her coaches and the Italian Boxing Federation. The federation knocked back the offer.

Why is the author of Harry Potter angry about this?

The fight ignited a hateful firestorm on social media, especially after public figures such as JK Rowling — the British author of children’s fantasy series Harry Potter — joined the fray to levy anti-trans attacks.

Rowling has been accused of accelerating the TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) movement. 

On X (formerly Twitter) she wrote Khelif had “the smirk of a male who’s [sic] knows he’s protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head”.

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The post had, at time of writing, 116 million views and was followed by other misleading statements posted by conservative influencers and politicians including former US president Donald Trump and his vice-president pick JD Vance, who used the moment to attack the top Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris.

There is also some genuine community concern being aired on social media that people born as biological males are able to compete against biological women in sporting events.

Democratic candidate in the US state of Florida Mike Harvey wrote on X: “I don’t support boys competing against girls, and I represent some of the largest names in Dem politics and speak for the mainstream of the Dem Party. We can talk about extremism in both parties, but it won’t protect our girls. You want to fix the problem, or we can culture war?”

The controversy is being fuelled by a “really dangerous and harmful populism”, according to Mary Lou Rasmussen, a sociology professor at Australian National University who has researched gender misconception in elite sports.

“Lighting a fuse around gender is something we’ve been doing for centuries, and this is another instantiation of it,” they told ABC NEWS Verify.

There were meaningful discussions around gender politics to be had, particularly in sports, Professor Rasmussen said, but with Khelif, those kind of conversations were a distraction.

“I think we get caught up in trying to search for the truth of this. Then we miss the point because the point is that people want to amplify … racist, engendered dog whistling,” they said.

“I think we need to speak back to that and really name that as what’s happening.”

What does the IOC say about all of this?

Thomas Bach gesturing while giving a speech.

President of the IOC Thomas Bach stood up for the two female boxers.(Reuters: Denis Balibouse)

The IOC says the pair met all eligibility rules.

The organisation’s president, Thomas Bach, has claimed Mr Kremlev was using the tests as part of a “defamation campaign” against the Olympic body to disrupt the competition amid his ongoing feud with the IOC and Russia’s exclusion from these Games.

The organisation issued a statement  on Friday describing much of the reporting around Khelif and Lin as “misleading information about two female athletes”.

IOC spokesman Mr Adams went further on Sunday, describing the IBA “as a discredited federation which wanted to change the results of a bout”.

How are Khelif and Lin responding to the controversy?

In a Sunday night interview with SNTV — a sports video partner of The Associated Press — Khelif condemned the discourse swirling around her and Lin.

“I send a message to all the people of the world to uphold the Olympic principles and the Olympic charter, to refrain from bullying all athletes, because this has effects, massive effects,” Khelif said in Arabic.

“It can destroy people, it can kill people’s thoughts, spirit and mind. It can divide people. And because of that, I ask them to refrain from bullying.”

According to AP, Khelif declined to answer when asked whether she had undergone testing other than for doping, saying she did not want to talk about it. She has welcomed support from the IOC.

“I know that the Olympic committee has done me justice, and I am happy with this remedy because it shows the truth,” she said.

ABC NEWS Verify could not find any public statement from Lin Yu-ting but Taiwan’s president Lai Ching-te came out strongly in her defence on his Facebook page

“Let us stand on [Lin’s] side, firmly support her, and cheer loudly for Lin Yu-ting with best wishes and applause!” Lai said, according to Taiwanese media.

What happens next?

Khelif is guaranteed a medal at the Paris Olympics — we just don’t know what colour yet. Her next fight in the welterweight division is a semifinal on Wednesday morning, Australian time, against Janjaem Suwannapheng of Thailand.

Lin Yu-ting is also guaranteed a Paris medal. Her next fight is a semifinal against Esra Yildiz Kahraman on Thursday morning, Australian time.

The winners of both of these bouts will progress to the gold medal fights in their respective divisions.

In terms of gender issues in sport more generally, the IOC has a framework on fairness, inclusion and non-discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sex variations and usually leaves it up to sport governing bodies to define and rule on eligibility.

The IOC has made it clear it won’t administer the sport of boxing at the 2028 Games in Los Angeles, and it’s hoping another international boxing federation steps up.

“We are imploring the [boxing] federations to come together — and that movement has started — to come back with a modernised new federation that respects the rights of the athletes,” Mr Adams said.

Posted 5h ago5 hours agoMon 5 Aug 2024 at 6:39pm, updated 1h ago1 hours agoMon 5 Aug 2024 at 10:59pm