The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has spoken out regarding the legitimacy of the so-called gender eligibility tests surrounding two boxers competing in Paris.
The discussion surrounding the decision to allow Algeria's Imane Khelif and Taiwan's Lin Yu-ting to compete in this year's Summer Olympic Games has been rampant on social media.
Comment sections became heated and full of misinformation after Italian boxer Angela Carini quit just 46 seconds into her round-of-16 bout after one significant punch at the hands of Khelif.
Per a fact check from GLAAD, neither Khelif nor Lin identify as transgender or as having been born with a male body.
Much of the debate stems whether the boxers have a rare condition known as differences in sex development (DSD). Per Reuters: "Differences of Sexual Development are a group of rare conditions involving genes, hormones and reproductive organs.
"Some people with DSDs are raised as female but have XY sex chromosomes, blood testosterone levels in the male range and the ability to use testosterone circulating within their bodies."
The rumors were sparked after IBA chief executive Chris Roberts told the BBC that male XY chromosomes were found in "both cases" last year. The IBA also cited high levels of testosterone in Khelif’s system.
The Russia-led International Boxing Association (IBA) has since been decertified as the governing international body of boxing and was stripped by the IOC of any recognition last year over financial, governance and ethical concerns, per News.com.au.
Once again defending their decision to allow Khelif and Lin compete - as they did at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics - IOC spokesman Mark Adams has spoken out.
Speaking at a press conference on Sunday (August 4), Adams discredited the legitimacy of the IBA's gender eligibility tests, saying: "The tests themselves, the process of the tests, the ad-hoc nature of the tests are not legitimate and you'll also expect me to tell you that I'm not going to discuss the individual intimate details of athletes in public, which I think is pretty disgraceful for those who've leaked that material."
Adams then pointed out the fact that there are people at the center of this row, adding: "Frankly, to be put in that position must be awful, on top of all of the social media harassment that these athletes have had."
"The very fact that the decision to do the testing was taken on the spot there - under what purpose, under what the test was for, I don't know," Adams continued. "As I say, we managed to do away with sex testing in the last century so I'm not quite sure what the foundation for the testing was."
However, the International Boxing Association (IBA) has now fired back.
During a chaotic press conference in Paris on Monday (August 5) - which was set up to clarify what tests Khelif and Lin underwent last year and the results that were determined - Ioannis Filippatos, former chairman of the IBA’s medical committee, spoke about both boxers.
Regarding the tests on both athletes from 2023, Filippatos said: "The medical result, blood result, looks - and the laboratory says - that these boxers are male."
"The problem is that we have two blood exams with karyotype of male. This is the answer from the laboratory," he added.
Despite the ongoing controversy, both Khelif and Lin are through to the semi-finals and, therefore, both guaranteed medals.
As Adams has previously stated: "Everyone competing in the women’s category is complying with the competition eligibility rules."
