The Imane Khelif Gender-Eligibility Controversy in Olympic Boxing

Algerian boxer Imane Khelif won gold in the women’s 66-kilogram category at the 2024 Paris Olympics, a victory that arrived in the middle of a monthslong international dispute over whether she should have been allowed to compete in the category at all. The controversy traced back roughly a year earlier, to the 2023 IBA World Championships, where the International Boxing Association disqualified Khelif after she failed an eligibility test the organization said it administered, along with a second boxer, Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, under the IBA’s own criteria for women’s competition.

The International Olympic Committee, however, does not recognize the IBA, having suspended and then formally withdrawn recognition of the federation in 2019 and June 2023 respectively over separate governance and financial disputes unrelated to the gender-eligibility question. Because the IOC ran boxing at the Paris Games directly rather than deferring to the IBA, it applied its own eligibility criteria, which Khelif met, clearing her to compete in the women’s category despite the prior IBA disqualification.

The IBA maintained publicly that DNA testing had identified Khelif and Lin as having XY chromosomes, framing the finding as evidence the two boxers had been “trying to trick their colleagues into posing as women.” IOC officials rejected that characterization, describing the IBA’s testing as “flawed” and “not legitimate,” and cast the dispute as part of a broader, politically charged conflict between the Russian-influenced IBA leadership and the Olympic body that had cut ties with it. Khelif herself has consistently maintained that she is a woman and has disputed the IBA’s findings throughout the controversy, including in subsequent legal action.

The dispute outlasted the Paris Games. In 2025, World Boxing, a newer federation the IOC has worked with as an alternative to the IBA, barred Khelif from competing in its sanctioned women’s events unless she submits to a new sex-eligibility test under that organization’s own policy, a requirement Khelif has publicly challenged. The case has become a reference point in broader, largely unresolved debates within international sports governance over how to verify eligibility for women’s competition categories, debates that extend well beyond boxing and that Khelif’s case did little to settle even after her Olympic medal was secured.