Boxer Imane Khelif challenges gender testing and takes World Boxing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport

Algerian Imane Khelif, Olympic boxing champion at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, has challenged the new regulations of World Boxing (the international federation governing the discipline worldwide ) imposing gender tests in the sports court, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) announced on Monday, September ¹ .

At the heart of a controversy over her gender during the Paris Games , the Algerian boxer is contesting the ban she was given from participating in international competitions without first undergoing a chromosomal test, specifies the CAS, which has not yet set a hearing date.

Specifically, Imane Khelif is seeking the annulment of the decision taken at the end of May by World Boxing – a rival body to the controversial International Boxing Federation (IBA), recognized in February by the International Olympic Committee – which barred her from the Eindhoven tournament in June, the Netherlands, the first competition subject to these new regulations. The boxer is demanding to be able to participate "without testing" in the World Championships in Liverpool (United Kingdom), which begin Thursday and run until September 14.

This latest request has almost no chance of success since the CAS specifies that it has refused to grant a suspensive effect to the appeal of the Algerian boxer, filed on August 5. "The parties are currently exchanging written briefs and, with their agreement, a hearing will be scheduled," adds the CAS, whose procedures are confidential and the hearings almost always behind closed doors.

At the Paris Games, Imane Khelif was the target of a wave of hatred and a disinformation campaign , as was Taiwanese Lin Yu-ting, who presented her as a "man fighting women" . The 26-year-old boxer, who won the -66 kg final, competed in the Olympic tournament despite doubts about her testosterone levels which led the IBA to exclude her from the 2023 World Championships in New Delhi. In open war with the body for several years , the IOC confirmed the registration of the two athletes for the Paris Olympics, insisting that it was "established that they are women" .

Imane Khelif's request will provide the first opportunity for a legal debate on the reinstatement in world sport – by World Boxing but also in swimming and athletics – of genetic tests intended to establish biological sex, in force at the Olympic Games between 1968 and 1996.

By means of a PCR test, the aim is to condition access to the female category on the absence of the "SRY gene" , located on the Y chromosome, an indicator of masculinity, a method praised for its simplicity by its promoters, but whose reliability and relevance are debated. Such screening would exclude transgender athletes, as well as a portion of intersex athletes, who are female but have XY chromosomes, one of the forms of "differences in sexual development" . However, according to Francis Poulat, Inserm research director at the Institute of Human Genetics in Montpellier, quoted by France Info , these chromosomal variations "do not give them a biological advantage over XX women" .