IBA Insists That Boxers in Gender Row are "Men"

The boxing governing body at the centre of the Olympics gender row has just labeled the two athletes "men" in a Paris press conference that may have undermined its credibility.

"We don’t verify what they have between their legs", said Umar Kremlev, the International Boxing Association’s (IBA) president, in a well-timed advised as he explains the previous ruling. Kremlev, whose body still receives financial backing from Russian state-owned Gazprom, also upped the ante in his war with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) by standing by his slur that Thomas Bach is a "sodomite".

Appearing an hour late via video-link from Moscow, Kremlev had been addressing the IBA’s expulsion of Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting last year. The pair are now both certain of medals as women in Paris despite being ruled ineligible by tests carried out by the IBA in 2022 and 2023.

"The tests show they were men," said Kremlev in Russian, after it was explained that the pair were among four boxers who were initially suspected of being male. "We don’t verify what they have between their legs. We don't know if they were born like that, or if some changes were made. The second tests confirmed the first tests. If people have doubts, refer to them. They can make their own tests."

With boxing in crisis, the IBA had been attempting to reinforce its credibility in front of a packed room of journalists, but were questioned over apparent inconsistencies after Kremlev talked of "raised testosterone" while others talked of sex chromosome tests. One test in India last year and a prior test in Turkey in May 2022 "concluded the boxer's DNA was that of a male consisting of XY chromosomes," according to IBA correspondence sent to the IOC in June 2023.