Imane Khelif challenges World Boxing's femininity tests before the sports court

The fight between Imane Khelif and World Boxing continues. At the heart of a controversy over her gender at the Paris Games, the 26-year-old Algerian is challenging in court the ban she was given from participating in international competitions without first undergoing a chromosomal test, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) announced on Monday, September 1st. A hearing date has not yet been set.

Specifically, Imane Khelif is requesting the annulment of this decision taken at the end of May by World Boxing, which deprived her of a return to competition initially planned for a week later, at the Eindhoven tournament, the first event subject to the new regulations. She also wants to be able to participate "without testing" in the World Championships in Liverpool, which begin Thursday and run until September 14.

This latest request has almost no chance of success since the CAS, whose procedures are confidential and whose hearings are almost always held behind closed doors, specifies that it has refused to grant a suspensive effect to the appeal of the Algerian boxer, filed on August 5.

At the Paris Games, Khelif was the target of attacks and a disinformation campaign, as was Taiwan's Lin Yu-ting, portraying her as a "man fighting women." The 26-year-old boxer won the -66 kg final, as did Lin Yu-ting in the featherweight division. The controversy continued well beyond the Games: in February, the IBA announced it would sue the IOC for allowing Khelif to box at the Games.

The athlete responded that the accusations were "false and insulting." She added: "This is not just about me, but about the broader principles of fairness and due process in sport." She vowed to take her own legal action to refute the accusations. "I'm not going anywhere. I will fight in the ring, I will fight in the courts, and I will fight in the open until the truth is undeniable," she said at the time. The Algerian, who has become a true icon in her country, already announced in the spring that she would aim for another gold medal at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.

In the meantime, his legal action 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.

Using 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.

Such chromosomal screening would thus exclude transgender athletes, as well as some of those who have always been considered female but have XY chromosomes, one of the forms of "differences of sex development" (DSD) or intersex. This procedure – banned in France – has, however, attracted considerable criticism, notably from the World Medical Association, human rights organizations, and the scientific community, as it is considered unreliable and biologically reductive.