‘Sad situation for all boxers’: Head of World Boxing addresses issues over gender after Italian boxer quits mid-round

The head of the governing body that hopes to run the next Olympic boxing tournament said he supports the IOC’s eligibility policies at the Paris Olympics, and he urged those without deep understandings of gender issues to entrust those determinations to medical professionals and scientists.

World Boxing president Boris Van Der Vorst also said that his organisation will always put athletes’ safety first in developing its own policies on health and gender, while recognising that combat sports sometimes require extra considerations to protect all athletes.

Van Der Vorst still strongly disagrees with critics of the IOC’s handling of the Olympic tournament, specifically the eligibility of women’s boxers Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan.

“I think it’s very important that when people are eligible to compete here, we have to respect them,” Van Der Vorst said. 

“I think it’s a very sad situation for all boxers, everyone involved here.”

The now-banished International Boxing Association, which World Boxing hopes to replace, claimed both fighters failed gender eligibility tests at its 2023 world championships after both had competed in amateur boxing for many years.

Khelif won her first Paris bout on Thursday when her Italian opponent, Angela Carini, emotionally quit after just 46 seconds and a few punches. 

Even though Carini said she wasn’t making a political statement about Khelif, Carini’s tearful abandonment of the bout became a worldwide sensation on social media and in Western culture wars.

“What happened today, it shouldn’t be happening like this,” Van Der Vorst said. 

“The pressure that there is from social media, from the press, from everyone else, it’s not very helpful, and it’s getting into everyone’s head.”

Criticism of the two boxers is based partly in the policies and decisions of the IBA, which has been out of the Olympic movement since 2019 after years of IOC concerns about its leadership, integrity and financial transparency.

The IBA disqualified Khelif and stripped Lin of a bronze medal because “of their failure to meet the eligibility criteria for participating in the women’s competition, as set and laid out in the IBA Regulations”.

Van Der Vorst’s World Boxing is an alliance of several dozen nations who broke away from the IBA after an internal power struggle failed to oust its Russian president, Umar Kremlev. An IOC task force has run the past two Olympic boxing tournaments.

If World Boxing gains approval to become the sport’s Olympic governing body, it will be in charge of the major tournaments during the Olympic cycle. If World Boxing doesn’t succeed, boxing likely will be dropped from the Olympic program.

Van Der Vorst said it’s “too early” to know World Boxing’s exact policies on gender identity, given the unique physical demands and dangers of boxing.

“First of all, safety above all,” Van Der Vorst said. 

“But I think with a combat sport, there could be some other reasons how you are going to deal with these kinds of situations.”

The IOC used rules from 2016 in determining boxers’ gender eligibility, while several Olympic sports’ governing bodies have updated their gender rules over the past three years, including World Aquatics, World Athletics and the International Cycling Union. The governing body for track and field also last year tightened rules on athletes with differences in sex development.

“We will assign our medical committee as soon as possible after these Games to make policy, and they are already in progress,” Van Der Vorst said. 

“But they have to finalise their policy, and the general issue is very complicated. You need to have good tests, not only the gender tests, but also the medical tests. More importantly, I think it’s not up to you and I. It’s up to the (professional) people who are involved in (the testing).”