Latest news with #sexscreening
Al Jazeera
4 days ago
- Health
- Al Jazeera
Olympic boxing champ Imane Khelif requires gender test to continue fighting
Algeria's Olympic boxing champion Imane Khelif must undergo genetic sex screening in order to participate in upcoming events, the sport's governing body said, as it introduced mandatory sex testing for all boxers in its competitions. World Boxing announced the new policy on Friday and specifically mentioned Algeria's Khelif, who won the women's welterweight gold at the Paris Olympics last year and prompted a gender-eligibility row. 'Imane Khelif may not participate in the female category at … any World Boxing event until Imane Khelif undergoes genetic sex screening in accordance with World Boxing's rules and testing procedures,' the organisation said in a statement. 'World Boxing has written to the Algerian Boxing Federation to inform it that Imane Khelif will not be allowed to participate in the female category at the Eindhoven Box Cup or any World Boxing event until Imane Khelif undergoes sex testing,' it added. World Boxing is responsible for organising bouts at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, after being granted provisional recognition by the International Olympic Committee. Under the new policy, all athletes above the age of 18 who want to participate in a World Boxing-owned or sanctioned competition will need to undergo a PCR, or polymerase chain reaction genetic test, to determine what sex they were at birth and their eligibility to compete. The PCR test is a laboratory technique used to detect specific genetic material, in this case the SRY gene, that reveals the presence of the Y chromosome, which is an indicator of biological sex. The test can be conducted by a nasal or mouth swab, or by taking a sample of saliva or blood. National federations will be responsible for testing and will be required to confirm the sex of their athletes when entering them into World Boxing competitions by producing certification of their chromosomal sex, as determined by a PCR test. Reuters news agency reported that Khelif could not be reached for comment, while the Algerian Boxing Federation did not immediately respond to questions about the development. Khelif said in March: 'For me, I see myself as a girl, just like any other girl. I was born a girl, raised as a girl, and have lived my entire life as one.' 'I have competed in many tournaments, including the Tokyo Olympics and other major competitions, as well as four World Championships,' she said at the time. 'All of these took place before I started winning and earning titles. But once I began achieving success, the campaigns against me started.' The 26-year-old is targeting a second gold medal at the 2028 Games in Los Angeles after her triumph in Paris. Her Olympic success, along with that of Taiwan's Lin Yu-ting, led to a raging gender eligibility debate in Paris, with high-profile figures such as United States President Donald Trump and Elon Musk weighing in. In February, Trump signed an executive order banning transgender athletes from competing in women's sports. Khelif said she would not be intimidated by Trump as she is not transgender.
National Post
4 days ago
- Health
- National Post
Olympic boxing champ Imane Khelif must undergo genetic sex screening
Article content Olympic boxing champion Imane Khelif must undergo genetic sex screening to participate in upcoming events with the sport's new governing body. Article content Article content World Boxing announced mandatory sex testing for all athletes Friday. The governing body specifically mentioned Khelif when announcing the policy, saying the Algerian gold medal winner must be screened before she will be approved to fight at any upcoming events, including the Eindhoven Box Cup next month in the Netherlands. Article content 'The introduction of mandatory testing will be part of a new policy on 'Sex, Age and Weight' to ensure the safety of all participants and deliver a competitive level playing field for men and women,' World Boxing wrote in a statement. The fighters' national federations will be responsible for administering the tests and providing the results to World Boxing. Article content Khelif won a gold medal at the Paris Olympics last summer amid international scrutiny on her and Taiwan's Lin Yu-ting, another gold medal winner. The previous governing body for Olympic boxing, the Russian-dominated International Boxing Association, disqualified both fighters from its 2023 world championships after claiming they had failed an unspecified eligibility test. Article content The IOC ran the past two Olympic boxing tournaments after the banishment of the IBA for decades of misdeeds and controversy, and it applied the sex eligibility rules used in previous Olympics. Khelif and Lin were eligible to compete under those standards. Article content Khelif intends to return to international competition next month in Eindhoven as part of her plan to defend her gold medal at the Los Angeles Olympics, but some boxers and their federations had already spoken out to protest her inclusion. Article content Chromosome testing was common in Olympic sports during the 20th century, but was largely abandoned in the 1990s because of numerous ambiguities that couldn't be easily resolved by the tests, collectively known as differences in sex development (DSD). Many sports switched to hormone testing to determine sex eligibility, but those tests require governing bodies to make difficult decisions on the eligibility of women with naturally high testosterone levels. Article content Three months ago, World Athletics — the governing body for track and field — became the first Olympic sport to reintroduce chromosome testing, requiring athletes who compete in the women's events to submit to the test once in their careers. Article content World Boxing has been provisionally approved to replace the IBA as the governing body at the Los Angeles Games, but it has faced significant pressure from boxers and their federations to create sex eligibility standards.
