PARIS: The Internat­ional Boxing Association (IBA) claimed on Monday at a chaotic press conference that tests on two boxers at the centre of a gender controversy at the Paris Olym­pics show they “are male”.

The IBA said previously that it disqualified Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting from its 2023 world championships after the fighters failed gender eligibility tests, without spe­c­ifying what the tests were.

The boxing in the French capital is run by the Intern­a­tional Olympic Committee (IOC) because of financial, governance and ethical concerns at the IBA.

The IOC cleared the two boxers to fight and both are in the semi-finals and therefore guaranteed a medal.

The two organisations have been in open dispute.

“The medical result, blood result, looks — and the laboratory says — that these boxers are male,” said Ioannis Filippatos, former chairman of the IBA’s medical committee. “The problem is that we have two blood exams with karyotype of male. This is the answer from the laboratory.”

Published in Dawn, August 6th, 2024