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The head of the governing body that hopes to run the next Olympic boxing tournament said he has not seen "one single test" that proves two female boxers at the centre of a gender controversy are transgender.
The eligibility of women's boxers Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan has come under intense scrutiny following Khelif's 46-second victory over Italy's Angela Carini on Thursday.
Khelif's emphatic win in the opening round of the 66kg competition drew widespread criticism. Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni described the match-up as "not on an equal footing" while tech billionaire Elon Musk responded "absolutely" to a post on his social media platform, X, by an American swimmer that "men don't belong in women's sports".
On Friday, Carini apologised to Khelif over the way she handled the moments after the fight.
"All this controversy makes me sad," Carini told Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport.
"I'm sorry for my opponent, too. If the IOC said she can fight, I respect that decision."
And World Boxing president Boris van der Vorst said his organisation fully supports the International Olympic Committee's eligibility policies at the Paris Olympics, and urged critics without deep understandings of gender issues to entrust those determinations to medical professionals and scientists.
“I have not seen one single test that is proving that [the boxers are] transgender,” Van Der Vorst said in an interview with the Associated Press. “That’s the reason why it’s not very respectful for the boxers who are competing here ... to speak about them in these terms. That’s what I’m trying to stress. When there is proof, yeah, that’s a different situation. But I haven’t seen anything that proves it.”
Van der Vorst said World Boxing, which hopes to run the men's and women's boxing events starting at the 2028 Games in Los Angeles, said his organisation will put athletes' safety first in developing its own policies on health and gender, adding that combat sports sometimes require extra considerations to protect all athletes.
“I think it’s very important that when people are eligible to compete here, we have to respect them,” Van der Vorst said. “I think it’s a very sad situation for all boxers, everyone involved here."
The now-banished International Boxing Association (IBA), which World Boxing hopes to replace, claimed both fighters failed gender eligibility tests at its 2023 World Championships after both had competed in amateur boxing for many years.
The IBA, which has been out of the Olympic movement since 2019 after years of IOC concerns about its leadership, integrity and financial transparency, said on Wednesday that the pair were previously disqualified "to uphold the level of fairness and utmost integrity of the competition".
Khelif competed at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, losing to Ireland's Kellie Harrington in the quarter-finals. She is back in action against Hungary's Luca Anna Hamori in the quarter-finals on Saturday, where there is likely to be even more scrutiny on the Algerian.
Lin fights on Friday in the 57kg category.
During her brief outing on Thursday, Khelif landed two flush right hands, causing damage to her Carini's nose. A distraught Carini ignored attempts by Khelif to shake her hand at the end of the bout and fell to her knees and sobbed before breaking into tears again in front of the media.
Although Carini said she was not making a political statement about Khelif, Carini’s tearful abandonment of the bout became a worldwide sensation on social media.
Speaking to the media after the bout, Carini, who had blood on her shorts, said Khelif's punches “hurt so much" and that the loss had left her "heartbroken".
“What happened today, it shouldn’t be happening like this," Van der Vorst said. “The pressure that there is from social media, from the press, from everyone else, it’s not very helpful, and it’s getting into everyone’s head.”
Van Der Vorst's World Boxing is an alliance of several dozen nations who broke away from the IBA after an internal power struggle failed to oust its Russian president, Umar Kremlev. An IOC task force has run the past two Olympic boxing tournaments.
If World Boxing gains approval to become the sport's Olympic governing body, it will be in charge of the major tournaments during the Olympic cycle. If World Boxing doesn't succeed, boxing likely will be dropped from the Olympic programme.
Van Der Vorst said it’s “too early” to know World Boxing's exact policies on gender, given the unique physical demands and dangers of boxing.
“First of all, safety above all,” Van der Vorst said. “But I think with a combat sport, there could be some other reasons how you are going to deal with these kinds of situations.”
The IOC used rules from 2016 in determining boxers' gender eligibility, while several Olympic sports' governing bodies have updated their gender rules over the past three years, including World Aquatics, World Athletics and the International Cycling Union. The governing body for track and field also last year tightened rules on athletes with differences in sex development.
“We will assign our medical committee as soon as possible after these Games to make policy, and they are already in progress,” Van der Vorst said. "You need to have good tests, not only the gender tests, but also the medical tests. More importantly, I think it’s not up to you and I. It’s up to the [professional] people who are involved in [the testing].”
