The International Boxing Association president said that some participants “were trying to fool their colleagues”
FILE PHOTO: The preliminary round of the Elite women 63-66 kgs welter category IBA Women’s World Boxing Championship 2023, in New Delhi on March 18, 2023. © Arun SANKAR / AFP
Several participants were disqualified from the Women’s World Boxing Championship after DNA tests rendered them ineligible, Umar Kremlev, President of the International Boxing Association, wrote on Telegram on Saturday. The competition took place in New Delhi, India on Sunday.
Kremlev said that the association’s executives met after the women’s championship to discuss “fairness among athletes and professionalism.” He added that after “a series of DNA-tests” the association “uncovered athletes who were trying to fool their colleagues and pretended to be women.”
However, Kremlev claims that the tests “proved they had XY chromosomes and were thus excluded from the sports events.”
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Algeria’s Imane Khelif, who won the 2022 African Championships and this year’s Mediterranean Games, was disqualified from the event “due to the failure to meet the IBA eligibility criteria.” Algerian media reported that her hormone test had returned an elevated testosterone level. Khelif claimed she was the victim of a “conspiracy.”
American and European sports have been locked in a debate over trans athletes. On Thursday, World Athletics banned “male-to-female transgender athletes who have been through male puberty” from female events. World Aquatics, which handles watersports, made a similar decision in June 2022. Both decisions drew the ire of LGBT rights organizations and trans athletes.
Meanwhile, in many sporting events that do allow their participation, trans women have been beating the competition by a landslide. US cyclocross champion Hannah Arensman quit the sport after losing to a transgender athlete. She told reporters on Thursday that she “came in 4th place, flanked on either side by male riders awarded 3rd and 5th places.” Record-setting Canadian trans runner Tiffany Newell announced earlier this month that she was retiring from the sport to “stop being the center of controversy.”
