Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting (林郁婷) will not attend this year’s World Boxing Championships in Liverpool, England, due to a lack of response regarding her sex tests from the organizer, World Boxing.
The national boxing association on Monday said that it had submitted all required tests to World Boxing, but had not received a response as of Monday, the departure day for the championships.
It said the decision for Lin to skip the championships was made to protect its athletes, ensuring they would not travel to the UK without a guarantee of participation.
Photo: AFP
Lin, who won a gold medal in the women’s 57kg boxing at the Paris Olympics last year, was embroiled in a controversy about her gender during that event, despite the International Olympic Committee’s continued confirmation of her eligibility as a female boxer.
Aside from Lin, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif was also at the center of the major gender row, after the she also won gold in a separate weight class.
Lin and Khelif were subjected to attacks on social media, rumors about their biological sex and disinformation during the Games.
Lin has since missed multiple international competitions, including dropping out of an event in the UK last year due to World Boxing allegedly questioning her eligibility after she had arrived.
World Boxing president Boris van der Vorst later apologized for the lack of clear gender testing policies and standards.
Lin in May dropped out of the Thailand Open after arriving there due to disagreements over sex testing methods.
World Boxing on May 30 announced a mandate that athletes older than 18 submit polymerase chain reaction genetic tests to determine their sex at birth and their eligibility to compete in its events.
Lin in June opted out of the World Boxing Cup due to what Taiwanese officials characterized as a lack of transparency about “complementary measures” regarding the sex test.
World Boxing on Aug. 20 released a confirmation of its sex testing standards, clearly stating that testing results would directly determine whether the tested athlete is female or male.
The national boxing association said that it had convened a medical team consisting of experts in genetics, physiology and sports medicine more than a month ago to discuss sex testing for athletes and had reached out to World Boxing since last month for clear participation regulations.
It expressed hope that World Boxing would respond as soon as possible, as the matter of Lin’s eligibility “cannot drag on like this.”
World Boxing plans to issue a decision after holding four to six weeks of discussions on its policies, sources said.
Lin’s gender controversy began when she was disqualified from the 2023 Women’s World Boxing Championships, with the organizer, the International Boxing Association, claiming that she had failed a sex verification test.
Khelif has turned to sport’s top court to attempt to overturn the introduction of a gender test, the court said on Monday.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport in a statement said that Khelif was challenging the global boxing federation’s decision “that disallows the athlete’s participation in upcoming World Boxing events without a preliminary genetic test.”
Additional reporting by AFP
SILENCING CRITICS: In addition to blocking Taiwan, China aimed to prevent rights activists from speaking out against authoritarian states, a Cabinet department said The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday condemned transnational repression by Beijing after RightsCon, a major digital human rights conference scheduled to be held in Zambia this week, was abruptly canceled due to Chinese pressure over Taiwanese participation. This year’s RightsCon, the world’s largest conference discussing issues “at the intersection of human rights and technology,” was scheduled to take place from tomorrow to Friday in Lusaka, and expected to draw 2,600 in-person attendees from 150 countries, along with 1,100 online participants. However, organizers were forced to cancel the event due to behind-the-scenes pressure from China, the ministry said, expressing its “strongest condemnation”
Taiwan’s economy grew far faster than expected in the first quarter, as booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications drove a surge in exports, spilling over into investment and consumption, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. GDP growth was 13.69 percent year-on-year during the January-to-March period, beating the DGBAS’ February forecast by 2.23 percentage points and marking the most robust growth in nearly four decades, DGBAS senior official Chiang Hsin-yi (江心怡) told a news conference in Taipei. The result was powered by exports, which remain the backbone of Taiwan’s economy, Chiang said. Outbound shipments jumped 51.12 percent year-on-year to
DELAYED BUT DETERMINED: The president’s visit highlights Taiwan’s right to international engagement amid regional pressure from China President Willaim Lai (賴清德) yesterday arrived in Eswatini, more than a week after his planned visit to Taiwan’s sole African ally was suspended because of revoked overflight permits. “The visit, originally scheduled for April 22, was postponed due to unforeseen external factors,” Lai wrote on social media. “After several days of careful arrangements by our diplomatic and national security teams, we successfully arrived today.” Lai said he looked forward to further deepening Taiwan-Eswatini relations through closer cooperation in the economy, agriculture, culture and education, as well as advancing the nation’s international partnerships. The president was initially scheduled to arrive in time to celebrate
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) yesterday said the US faced a choice between an “impossible” military operation or a “bad deal” with Tehran, after US President Donald Trump disparaged Iran’s latest peace proposal. Negotiations between the two countries have been deadlocked since a ceasefire came into effect on April 8, with only one round of direct peace talks held so far. Iran’s Tasnim and Fars news agencies reported that Tehran had submitted a 14-point proposal to mediator Pakistan, but Trump was quick to cast doubt on it. “I will soon be reviewing the plan that Iran has just sent to us, but
RSS