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The flare-up over gender verification, transgenders and those with hyperandrogenism continues with actions announced Monday, both serious and silly.
The International Boxing Association, dismissed from the Olympic Movement by the International Olympic Committee in 2023, said Monday it will be back in court over Paris Olympic women’s gold medalists Yu-ting Lin (TPE: 57 kg) and Imane Khelif (ALG: 66 kg), despite not being involved in the 2024 Olympic boxing tournament:
“IBA is filing an official complaint with the Attorney General of Switzerland, Mr Stefan Blatter, regarding the IOC’s actions that facilitated the participation of these ineligible athletes in the 2024 Olympic boxing tournament in Paris. According to the Swiss law, any action or inaction that poses a safety risk to competition participants warrants investigation and may serve as grounds for criminal prosecution. In addition, similar complaints are to be filed with the Attorneys General of France and the USA.”
The IBA trumpets its disqualification of both Lin and Khelif at its 2023 Women’s World Championships, but conveniently skips:
● Khelif boxed and won a silver medal at the IBA’s 2022 Women’s Worlds in the 63 kg class, and then competed at the IBA’s 2023 Women’s Worlds and won four matches, advancing to the final before being declared ineligible.
● Lin boxed and won the IBA Women’s World Championships gold at 57 kg in 2022, winning five bouts, then won three matches, advancing to the semifinals of the 2023 Women’s Worlds 57 kg class, where she was defeated. Only then was she disqualified and deprived of the bronze medal.
Russian Umar Kremlev took over the IBA in 2020 and was in charge while Khelif and Lin each fought nine matches at the 2022 and 2023 Worlds before being declared ineligible, only in the medal rounds.
Further, the IBA statement states that last week’s U.S. Presidential Executive Order banning transgender women from women’s sports competitions in the U.S. “proves that IBA stood firm” and protected women boxers by disqualifying Lin and Khelif. In fact, neither Lin or Klehif are transgender women and were born, raised and fought their entire boxing careers as women.
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On a more serious note, World Athletics, which actually has been in the forefront of supporting scientific research and closely-drawn rules on women’s eligibility, announced a new round of consultations to update its standards for both transgenders and women with “differences in sex development” from 10 February to 5 March 2025.
A recommendations document outlines a significant change in the federation’s approach, noting in pertinent part (typical male chromosomes are XY, for females, XX):
“World Athletics has learnt the following:
● “a. New evidence has clarified that testosterone suppression in 46XY DSD and 46XY transgender individuals can only ever partly mitigate the overall male advantage in the sport of Athletics.
● “b. Evidence has accumulated that makes clear that an exclusive focus on male puberty is wrong:
i. New evidence clarifies that there is already an athletically significant performance gap before the onset of puberty. The childhood or pre-pubertal performance gap in the sport of Athletics specifically is 3 to 5% in running events, and higher in throwing and jumping events.
ii. New evidence establishes that athletic disadvantages associated with female body structure and physiology contribute to the performance gap.
● “c. There is no new countervailing evidence that would suggest that transgender women and androgen sensitive XY DSD athletes are biologically different to each other in relation to the design and goals of the Female Category.
● “d. There has been some opposition to testosterone suppression as a condition for eligibility in the Female Category.”
The new recommendations re-introduce gender testing, along the lines suggested last October by the U.N. Special Rapporteur for violence against women and girls. The World Athletics brief states:
“This recommendation proposes that in advance of and as a pre-condition for any athlete’s competition in the Female Category at elite level, World Athletics should be in possession of test results that establish their eligibility.
“The required test will be for the SRY gene and, if required, testosterone levels, either via cheek swab with any necessary follow-up or via dry blood spot analysis. In this context the SRY gene, which is almost always on the Y chromosome, is used as a highly accurate proxy for biological sex but makes room for an additional diagnostic process at the athlete’s discretion.”
It was further noted that such actions are only meant for elite athletes; “[t]he aspect of the sport of Athletics that is elite competition properly draws lines on the basis of biological sex, but the sport as a whole, for example at the non-elite and recreational levels, has a place for everyone.”
World Athletics President Sebastian Coe (GBR) explained:
“While our current Eligibility Regulations for DSD and Transgender athletes are robust and based on the science available at the time of our last consultation, several scientific developments in this field have emerged since then and it is our role, as the global governing body for athletics, to ensure that our guidelines keep up with the latest information available to maintain a fair and level-playing field in the Female Category.”
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