Gender row Olympic champion Imane Khelif skips tournament days after World Boxing announce mandatory sex testing
IMANE KHELIF will SKIP the Eindhoven Box Cup just a week after World Boxing announced mandatory sex testing for all athletes.
The Algerian, along with Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting, was the focal point of an explosive gender row that dominated the 2024 Olympics in Paris last summer.
Khelif fought at the Games 18 months after being banned from competing at the Women’s World Championships for allegedly failing a gender eligibility test.
The alleged test administered by the International Boxing Association is said to have determined that Khelif and Yu-Ting have male XY chromosomes.
The pair, however, were permitted to compete by the IOC because of their female passport statuses, to the fury of many.
Less than a year after the scandal, World Boxing announced all participants in competitions under their jurisdiction will have to undergo sex testing.
And Khelif won’t be in action at their first event since the announcement in Eindhoven having missed the deadline to register.
Eindhoven Cup media director Dirk Renders said: “The decision of Imane’s exclusion is not ours. We regret it.
Mayor of Eindhoven Joren Dijsselbloem has blasted World Boxing’s decision to implement mandatory sex testing.
In a letter to the Dutch Boxing Federation and the International Boxing Federation, he said: “As far as we are concerned, all athletes are welcome in Eindhoven.
“Excluding athletes based on controversial ‘gender tests’ certainly does not fit in with that.
“We are expressing our disapproval of this decision today and are calling on the organization to admit Imane Khelif after all.”
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