Boxing’s gender saga has a simple short-term fix. The bigger picture is more of a problem

Foremost within the Olympic Charter are seven “fundamental principles”. No.6 stipulates that it should be applied “without discrimination of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, sexual orientation, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status”. It’s a statement of good intentions; in reality, it is at best aspirational.

The highly contentious debate surrounding Algerian boxer Imane Khelif makes that abundantly evident. Far from being able to compete “without discrimination”, doubts raised over her gender by the International Boxing Association have resulted in the Algerian having to weather a storm of criticism about her eligibility.

Imane Khelif has had to defend her right to fight as a woman.Credit: Getty Images

Khelif’s backstory is not in dispute. Born a girl, she grew up in a rural Algerian village, where she excelled in soccer but switched to boxing after having to defend herself against boys unhappy that she often upstaged them on the field. She started competing as a boxer in 2018 with little fanfare, losing her first fight.

Four years later, however, she came to people’s attention when she was runner-up in the light welterweight division at the IBA Women’s World Boxing Championships. It was at this tournament in Turkey that she was gender-tested, along with three other women, by the boxing association following concerns raised by rival fighters, coaches and medical staff who disputed her eligibility based on her appearance and performance.

According to the boxing association, an independent body found Khelif and Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting had failed the test. They were not banned, however, until 10 months later after a second test was done while they were competing the following year in Delhi. Khelif was given the news of her ban on the same day she was meant to fight for gold at the 2023 world boxing championship.

While that could have been the end of Khelif’s boxing career, she was offered a reprieve by the International Olympic Committee, which allowed her to compete in Paris. As a consequence though, she has found herself at the centre of an acrimonious dispute between the IOC and the boxing association, which was stripped of its Olympic status last year due to long-standing corruption concerns.

In her defence, the IOC claims Khelif was the “victim of a sudden and arbitrary decision” by the boxing association. It is right. But the IOC is struggling to hold the high moral ground.

The Olympics stopped gender testing back in 2000 after it became such a contentious issue. Instead, it handed the authority to individual sports governing bodies to determine their own eligibility rules. That has left sporting bodies around the globe struggling to come to terms with a complex nexus of biology, gender and fairness in women’s sports.

And it has left athletes such as Khelif and Lin, who is also competing at the Games, having to defend their status as women while dealing with opaque eligibility rules that rely on tests that attempt to draw a simple binary of male/female in the highly complex scientific field of humans and their sex.

This is a predicament that requires a short and a long-term fix. In the short term, Khelif and Lin should be allowed to compete without having to defend their eligibility. The IOC gave them the green light to compete. End of story. Any objections about the rules should be directed at those who made them, not the athletes who are complying with them.

Consistent application of the rules, however, must be addressed in the interests of both athlete wellbeing and the integrity of the sports in which they participate. The Olympic boxing saga highlights the potential cost of the IOC’s outsourcing of decision-making on this contentious issue.

The issue of gender and sports is not going to recede until more research – and will – is invested in better understanding the science of human sex and the advantages their sex may offer certain athletes. Yes, it’s a difficult, complex discussion, but if major sporting organisations and society more broadly are not willing to confront this issue, the unedifying scenes of recent days will be repeated.

Fighting back tears after her quarter-final win over Hungarian Luca Anna Hamori, Khelif told reporters: “I want to tell the entire world that I am a female, and I will remain a female.”

That is not a victory declaration any athlete should have to make after a win.

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