Lin Yu‑Ting, Second Olympic Boxer Who Failed Gender Test, Beats Female Opponent

 The second of two boxers who were previously barred from a women’s competition over gender concerns has won a match against a female opponent Friday at the Paris Games.

Lin Yu‑ting of Taiwan beat Uzbekistan’s Sitora Turdibekova in the women’s 57-kilogram division, winning all three rounds and advancing to the quarterfinals. The judges were unanimous in their decision to award Yu-ting the win.

Turdibekova cried as she made her way back to the locker room after the fight.

Yu‑ting and another Olympic boxer, Imane Khelif of Algeria, were both disqualified from the Women’s World Boxing Championships in New Delhi last year after their chromosome tests came back as XY, according to Umar Kremlev, president of the International Boxing Association at the time.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) defended allowing both boxers to compete in the Paris Games.

“As with previous Olympic boxing competitions, the gender and age of the athletes are based on their passport,” the IOC said in a statement.

Men typically have XY chromosomes, while women have XX chromosomes, although rumors have swirled that the two boxers may be intersex, which would mean they have one of several conditions where chromosomes and genitalia are irregular. So far it is unclear whether either boxer has such a condition, however.

Yu-ting, 28, was registered as a female at birth, New Taipei City Councilor Cho Kuan-ting said, according to Taiwan News.

On Sunday, Yu‑ting will face Bulgaria’s Svetlana Staneva in the quarterfinals.

The gender controversy exploded on Thursday when Khelif won a match against Italy’s Angela Carini, who quit at 46 seconds after taking several blows to the head.

 

Carini could be seen saying the match was “unjust” before ripping her hand away from the referee and appearing to refuse to shake Khelif’s hand. She dropped to her knees and broke down in tears in the ring after losing.

However, Carini later said she wanted to apologize to Khelif for her actions at the end of their fight, saying she did not mean to avoid shaking her opponent’s hand.

In 2021, the IOC changed its gender rules, allowing each sport’s governing body to decide whether an athlete should compete. The Paris 2024 Boxing Unit is in charge of gender eligibility standards for this year’s Olympic boxing.