Boxing association announces gender tests: Olympic champion Khelif affected!

Boxing association announces gender tests: Olympic champion Khelif affected!

Eindhoven, Niederlande - The Boxing Association World Boxing has announced the introduction of mandatory gender tests today. This measure is part of a new guideline that focuses on gender, age and weight of athletes. The main goal of this guideline is the security of all participants and the creation of the same competitive conditions for men and women. This decision comes at a time when the debate about gender identity in sport is more intensive than ever.

A prominent figure in this discussion is the Algerian Olympic champion IMANE KHELIF, which is not approved for Eindhoven Box Cup in June due to these new regulations. Khelif is obliged to take a genetic gender before it can take part in World Boxing events. This arrangement was sent to the Algerian National Association in an official letter. Khelif and her Taiwanese colleague Lin Yu-Ting were already at the center of a gender dispute during the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

The controversy about gender tests

At the 2024 Olympics in Paris, Khelif managed to win her first encounter in the weight class up to 66 kg after her opponent Angela Carini from Italy. The fight only lasted 46 seconds because Carini broke off the encounter due to malaise and pain in the nose. This episode again led to questions about Khelif's gender identity, which were reinforced by the history of their disqualification by the World Championships in New Delhi, where they had not met the criteria of the now no longer recognized IBA association.

The IOC had declared the controversial decision of the IBA, Khelif and Lin from the 2023 World Cup, as arbitrary and allowed them to participate in the Olympic Games. According to a letter from the IOC to the IBA, responsibility for the boxing tournament was transferred to World Boxing in the future, which is now more specific. The outgoing IOC President Thomas Bach emphasized the need for a reliable partner for the implementation of the Olympic Games to get boxing in the Olympic program.

intersexuality and sport

The topic of intersexuality, which also affects Khelif, has gained visibility in recent years. Intersexual people can have both female and male characteristics, which makes access to competitions complicated. This is often regulated in sports via testosterone values, no longer by chromosome tests or physical checks. In athletics, for example, intersex athletes may have a maximum of 2.5 nanomol testosterone per liter.

Access to the women's area in sport is still a hotly discussed topic, since many intersex athletes, such as Caster Semenya, are often confronted with public doubts about their femininity. The challenges with which they are confronted were explained by experts such as Dennis Krämer, sociologist at the University of Münster. He realizes that there is no simple solution to ensure the balance between sporting fairness and inclusion.

In the middle of this complex discussion, Khelif describes the debate about her femininity as "bullying" and sees her Olympic victory in response to social criticism. The measures of World Boxing and the ongoing discussions on gender tests in sport show how important the compatibility of fairness and justice is, while at the same time the rights and identity of all athletes are preserved.