Imane Khelif’s sex-test results from the 2023 World Championships have been published for the first time, with the medical report appearing to indicate that the boxer is biologically male.
Just 36 hours after World Boxing ruled that Khelif, a hugely controversial Olympic champion in women’s boxing at last summer’s Paris Games, would need to undergo sex screening to be eligible for any future appearances in the female category, the document at the heart of this extraordinary saga was released into the public domain.
Alan Abrahamson, the American journalist who disclosed in Paris how the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had been warned more than a year earlier that Khelif had the DNA of a “male”, produced the result of a test carried out on the boxer in New Delhi in March 2023, triggering the boxer’s disqualification from the championships that year.
The document published on the 3 Wire Sports website summarises the findings on Khelif as “abnormal”, stating: “Chromosome analysis reveals male karyotype”. A karyotype refers to an individual’s complete set of chromosomes, which in Khelif’s case has been reported by the International Boxing Association (IBA) as being XY, the male pattern.
The test results carry the letterhead of Dr Lal PathLabs in New Delhi, accredited by the American College of Pathologists and certified by the Swiss-based International Organisation for Standardisation. This directly challenges the account of IOC spokesman Mark Adams, who in a tense news conference at the Paris Olympics described the results as “ad hoc” and “not legitimate”.
Thomas Bach, the IOC president, has gone even further, claiming that the results are the product of a Russian-led misinformation campaign. He pointed out in an interview earlier this year that the IBA, headed by Russia’s Umar Kremlev, had been stripped of IOC recognition in a row over ethics and financial management. The official authentication of the Indian laboratory that conducted the tests on Khelif increases the pressure on the IOC to explain why it believes the results are illegitimate.
It also makes any potential comeback by Khelif far more complicated. Outwardly the 26-year-old has been defiant, even vowing to win a second successive Olympic gold medal in Los Angeles in 2028. But World Boxing has ruled that Khelif is ineligible to enter future events as a woman without first submitting to the same chromosome testing that has already triggered the boxer’s disqualification at global level.
The governing body, provisionally approved to run Olympic boxing in LA, has announced that all athletes in its competitions over 18 years old must undergo a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) genetic test to determine their sex. The test detects chromosomal material through a mouth swab, saliva or blood. Khelif, who was allowed to box in Paris because of female passport status, has failed to provide any evidence of having female chromosomes in the nine months since the scandal erupted.
World Boxing’s tougher stance on the issue comes in response to widespread outrage at the scenes in Paris, where both Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting swept to Olympic titles, despite having been banned by the IBA the previous year on the grounds that they did not have XX chromosomes. Italy’s Angela Carini, the first opponent beaten by Khelif, described how she had been punched so hard that she feared for her life.
Mexico’s Brianda Tamara, who fought Khelif in 2022, said: “I don’t think I had ever felt like that in my 13 years as a boxer, nor in my sparring with men.” Latin American federations ultimately proved highly influential in persuading World Boxing to prioritise the reality of sex, in order to uphold fairness and safety for women.
In correspondence seen by Telegraph Sport, the Honduran federation told the Women’s Rights Network that “necessary measures should be taken so that only women by birth can compete in women’s competitions”. Their Peruvian counterparts also strongly urged the “protection of women”.
