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
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