Sex and the IOC: We need to talk about this
Allowing men to fight women in the Olympic boxing tournament is concerning and shows how misguided ideas about inclusion are overriding common sense
During the Paris Games two male boxers, Imane Khelif (Algeria) and Lin Yu Ting (Taiwan), were allowed to compete in the women’s category. This stirred up quite a bit of controversy when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) refused to entertain evidence presented by the International Boxing Association that showed the two athlete's were not eligible for the women's category. IOC spokesman, Mark Adams, claimed that the way it was discovered the athletes were male was not credible and therefore the IOC would not take any action to disqualify the two individuals. The result? The IOC knowingly allowed two men to fight against women in the Olympic boxing tournament.
Arguing that the manner in which the sex of the two boxers was determined is not credible implies that the test used was somehow inaccurate or invalid. That's not what the IOC is claiming though. Their argument doesn't refer to the testing method but rather why the athletes were tested at all (see the Associated Press quote below). The IOC is claiming that the testing was done arbitrarily and out of spite, and is therefore invalid.
While this may be a good courtroom argument (derivative evidence and all that), it's not the central issue nor is it a legal matter, at least not yet. Here's how the Associated Press described the controversy at the time:
The IOC has been in a yearslong and increasingly bitter feud with the International Boxing Association, which is now Russian-led, culminating in a permanent ban from the Olympics last year.
For the second straight Summer Games, the Olympic boxing tournaments have been run by an IOC-appointed administrative committee and not a functioning governing body.
In this dysfunction, boxing eligibility rules have not kept pace with other sports, and the issues weren’t addressed ahead of the Paris Games.
At the 2023 world championships, Khelif and Lin were disqualified and denied medals by the IBA, which said they failed eligibility tests for the women’s competition but has given little information about them. The governing body has contradicted itself repeatedly about whether the tests measured testosterone.
In a chaotic press conference Monday in Paris, IBA officials said they did blood tests on only four of the hundreds of fighters at the 2022 world championships and that it tested Khelif and Lin in response to complaints from other teams, apparently acknowledging an uneven standard of profiling that is considered widely unacceptable in sports. (Associated Press, 6 August 2024)
Note that measuring testosterone levels is part of routine drug testing at athletic events but is not a valid method for determining sex. Also, the term gender is often used inappropriately. The issue of male and female sport categories revolves around an athlete's biological sex. Gender is not a synonym for sex when scientific accuracy is needed.
Regardless of how the boxer’s sex was determined—and this is something that should be investigated—the IOC had evidence that they were not eligible to compete in the women's category and decided to do nothing about it.
The categories of male and female are important in sport. Males have recognized advantages over females when it comes to physical performance because they have gone through male puberty. At the elite level male athletes perform to a higher standard than females. If the female category is eliminated either through neglect or misguided eligibility rules then eventually there will be no females at the high performance level, and no point in having a female category.
Governing bodies have a duty to protect the female category by establishing methods to determine an athlete's eligibility to participate in that category. To neglect this duty is a disservice not only to the athletes affected but to the sport itself. And in the case of combat sports it should be obvious why protecting the female category is important.
Dr. Ross Tucker has a very good explanation of this issue in his podcast, The Real Science of Sport. He suggests that international sport governing bodies (IGBs) require athlete screening to determine eligibility for participation as a female. He notes that screening would not cause any additional administrative friction since athletes are already used to the drug testing protocols. Screenings could become part of that process, with results included in the athlete’s biometric passport.
As I mentioned in a previous newsletter, the IOC officially ended their sex testing of female athletes in 1999. This left it to IGBs to determine eligibility for the male and female categories. Triggered by some recent transgender dust ups, many IGBs have adopted the requirement that athletes certify their chromosomal sex in order to determine their eligibility for the female category. This is certainly a step in the right direction but unfortunately not all IGBs have done this yet.
One may wonder why the IOC acted in the way it did. Putting the fairness issue aside for a moment, how could they fail to defuse a potentially dangerous situation by allowing males to fight against females? Perhaps the answer lies in its framework for inclusion and fairness. As Dr. Tucker put it, they were defending their choice of inclusion over fairness and safety, even with evidence that two of the boxers were male. Luckily no one was hurt, but it’s hard to describe how bad this decision was. The IOC was so blinded by its flowery language about inclusion and the institutional inertia that produced it that it left common sense at the door.