IBA chief issues staunch defence over Imane Khelif’s gender eligibility test failures

Exclusive: Chief executive lambastes IOC for duty of care failure to boxers who fought Algerian and Lin Yu-ting after XY chromosome detected

Amid the white heat of the Olympic boxing furore, with Imane Khelif taking legal action over leaked medical documents that indicate the Algerian won a women’s gold medal in Paris despite being genetically male, there is another crucial perspective to consider. Namely, that of the International Boxing Association, who banned Khelif from last year’s world championships on the basis of its own test results concluding that the boxer’s DNA was “that of a male, consisting of XY chromosomes”.
The IBA sent a letter to the International Olympic Committee in June last year, warning of the safety risks that women could face at the Paris Games against a fighter who had already failed sex tests. But the IOC took no action, instead allowing Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, a second boxer whose results suggested the same difference in sexual development, to sweep to Olympic titles without losing a single round. Three months on, as the IOC pours scorn on fresh reporting in France about “unverified documents whose origin cannot be confirmed”, the IBA is mounting a staunch defence of the accuracy of its testing procedures.
“It was a chromosome test, to check for XX or XY, and these two boxers didn’t meet the eligibility criteria, because they both fell into the XY category,” Chris Roberts, the IBA chief executive, tells Telegraph Sport. “They were tested twice, in 2022 and 2023. When you receive a secondary laboratory test with the same results, demonstrating that both boxers are ineligible, it’s clear. What comes with it is our obligation and our duty of care to the other athletes.”
Roberts is unsparing in his argument that the IOC failed to uphold any such duty, with president Thomas Bach insisting with increasing desperation that womanhood could be determined by passport status alone. “In my opinion, Bach has taken two gold medals away from the other two finalists,” he says. “He has a heck of a lot to answer for. I find his comments totally disrespectful. How do you compete as a woman based on a passport? You or I could change our passports to do that.
“We support women’s right to compete against women. In a hard sport, women shouldn’t be subject to anything outside those criteria. When women are going to compete for a gold medal at the Olympic Games, they don’t need another obstacle in the way, an obstacle that shouldn’t have been there in the first place. And these two boxers ended up winning gold medals in both categories.”
The bad blood between the two organisations is profound. The IOC consistently claims that the IBA has a credibility deficit, stripping it of any role in organising the last two Olympic boxing tournaments due to an alleged failure to complete reforms on governance, finance and ethical issues. This overlooks two key points, however. Firstly, the Paris Boxing Unit, an ad hoc body established by the IOC to oversee this year’s Olympic bouts, was woefully unprepared to deal with the level of outrage unleashed by the involvement of Khelif and Lin. Secondly, are we supposed to believe, just because the IOC regards the IBA as unfit for purpose, that the boxers’ test results have been made up?
If you listen to Bach’s bluster, yes. “It was not even clear which tests were performed,” he said in Paris. But the IBA letter does spell out the specifics, stating: “Chromosome analysis reveals male karyotype.” Imaging is also included, for both Khelif and Lin, of an X and Y chromosome, illustrating that the tests were conducted by a Delhi laboratory certified by the Swiss-based International Organisation for Standardisation. The problem is that the IOC refuses to accept  its legitimacy, adamant that they were conducted arbitrarily.
Were they, though? Two rounds of testing were undertaken: one at the 2022 world championships in Istanbul, and another at the same event in India 12 months later. Both yielded the same finding that Khelif and Lin could not enter the women’s category as they were biologically male. Lin did not appeal against the results. Khelif did initially pursue an appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport but subsequently withdrew it, making the ban legally binding.
“I spoke personally to Khelif’s management team about it,” Roberts says. “We were trying to manage this situation. We’re not brutal, we’re not monsters. We were just trying to come to an understanding. Where are you supposed to differentiate between XX and XY? There was nothing we could do about it. As much as you might want to highlight how upsetting this all is for the athlete, we can’t change genetic make-up.”
There is also the question of why the IOC remains so dismissive about sex tests as a concept, given that Reem Alsalem, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, said last month that they should be mandatory so that women’s events were ring-fenced for those born female.
In a report presented to the General Assembly in New York, she wrote: “There are circumstances in which sex screenings are legitimate and proportional in order to ensure fairness and safety in sports. At the Paris Olympics, female boxers had to compete against two boxers whose sex as females was seriously contested, but the IOC refused to carry out a sex screening. Current technology enables a reliable sex screening procedure through a simple cheek swab with non-invasiveness, confidentiality and dignity.”
Endorsing Alsalem’s recommendations, Roberts explains: “It would take away any ambiguity and doubt for the organisation running the event. It would have been perfect for the IOC to have followed this. Having received communication from us after the two tests were carried out, it was only right for them to have followed it up.”
The ferocity of the row shows no sign of relenting. The Algerian Olympic Committee has this week criticised the “ongoing and baseless attacks” on Khelif in the wake of a leaked medical assessment, published in France, that again purports to show the boxer is XY. “These attacks aim to tarnish the image of an athlete who has brought honour to our nation on the international stage. We firmly condemn these attempts at destabilisation, which have no place in the world of sports.” The IOC has expressed similar sentiments.
There would, of course, be a perfectly easy way of dialling down all the sound and fury. And it would involve Khelif undergoing a quick test – a cheek swab, as Alsalem proposes – to furnish incontrovertible evidence of being female. “Go and put your money where your mouth is,” Roberts urges. “Go and take the test. The IBA will pay for it, no problem.” It has been three months since a jubilant Khelif was carried out of the ring on the shoulders of the Algerian delegation, and that offer has still not been taken up.