Another controversial boxer who had been disqualified by the International Boxing Association (IBA) defeated a female opponent at the Paris Olympics on Friday.
Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting took to the ring and easily won with a unanimous decision against Sitora Turdibekova of Uzbekistan, the Daily Mail reported.
After the match, Turdibekova was seen in tears, and the boxers did not shake hands and congratulate each other before leaving the ring.
Lin Yu-Ting is the second of two boxers that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) allowed to fight as females despite their failures in the IBA’s gender test, which caused the world boxing organization to disqualify them for sanctioned bouts last year.
Imane Khelif, the first competitor who had failed the IBA’s chromosome test, had so overmatched Italian boxer Angela Carini that the latter forfeited the match on Thursday after only 46 seconds in the ring.
In 2023, the IBA ruled that neither Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting nor Algerian Imane Khelif could fight in organization-sanctioned fights because they failed the testing requirements to be classified as “female.”
The IBA added that its rules were changed in 2022 to assure “competitive fairness and athletes’ safety.” However, the IOC decided to use the IBA’s rules from 2016 instead of the recent rules because the older set of rules allowed Lin and Khelif to participate as women.
The IOC decided to use 2016 rules, which allowed the boxers to fight in the women’s competition. The IOC then condemned the “aggression” of anyone who would question their right to compete as females.
“We have seen in reports misleading information about two female athletes competing at the Olympic Games Paris 2024,” read the joint statement from the Paris Boxing Unit and the IOC. “The two athletes have been competing in international boxing competitions for many years in the women’s category, including the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, International Boxing Association (IBA) World Championships and IBA-sanctioned tournaments.
“The current aggression against these two athletes is based entirely on this arbitrary decision, which was taken without any proper procedure – especially considering that these athletes had been competing in top-level competition for many years,” the statement added.
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