Several participants were disqualified from the Women’s World Boxing Championship after DNA tests rendered them ineligible, Umar Kremlev, president of the International Boxing Association (IBA), wrote on Telegram on Saturday. The competition concluded in New Delhi, India on Sunday.
Kremlev said that IBA executives had met towards the end of the championship to discuss “fairness among athletes and professionalism.” He added that after “a series of DNA-tests” the association “uncovered athletes who were trying to fool their colleagues and pretended to be women.”
Kremlev claimed that the tests “proved they had XY chromosomes and were thus excluded from the sports events.”
Algeria’s Imane Khelif, who won the 2022 African Championships and this year’s Mediterranean Games, was disqualified from the event “due to the failure to meet the IBA eligibility criteria.” Algerian media reported that her hormone test had returned an elevated testosterone level, although Khelif claimed she was the victim of a “conspiracy.”
American and European sports have been locked in a debate over trans athletes. On Thursday, World Athletics banned “male-to-female transgender athletes who have been through male puberty” from female events. World Aquatics, which handles watersports, made a similar decision in June 2022. Both moves drew the ire of LGBT rights organizations and trans athletes.
Meanwhile, in some sporting events that do allow their participation, trans women have comfortably beaten the competition. US cyclocross champion Hannah Arensman quit the sport after losing to a transgender athlete, and told reporters on Thursday that she “came in 4th place, flanked on either side by male riders awarded 3rd and 5th places.” Record-setting Canadian trans runner Tiffany Newell announced earlier this month that she was retiring from the sport to “stop being the center of controversy.”