Former swimmer says opponents should take legal action

 Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian 

The former Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies has encouraged the women beaten by the two boxers embroiled in the Olympics gender eligibility row to challenge the results of their bouts.

Imane Khelif, from Algeria, and Lin Yu-ting, representing Chinese Taipei (Taiwan), will both fight for gold in their weight classes with controversy still raging over their presence.

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The International Boxing Association banned both fighters from the women’s world championships last year after chromosome tests that allegedly found them to be ineligible to compete.

The right of the two athletes to participate in Paris has been defended by the International Olympic Committee on the grounds that they were categorised as female at birth and are stated as such in their passports. Both boxers competed at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

The IOC has described the tests undertaken on Khelif and Lin by the IBA, which was stripped of its status as the sport’s governing body last year over issues relating to integrity and corruption, as lacking credibility.

Davies, a silver medallist at the 1980 Olympics in the 400m individual medley behind Petra Schneider from East Germany, who subsequently admitted to taking performance-enhancing drugs, said she feared that the defeated opponents of Khelif and Lin were too scared to challenge the fight results.

 Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA

Speaking on a panel for Sex Matters, a campaign group on issues relating to women’s rights, she said: “You’d like to think that there ought to be [a route to legal challenge], from a duty of care perspective.

“It is the job of any organisation, whether that is a school or a sports club or a governing body, or, in fact, a world governing body like the IOC, to have a responsibility to safety.

“At the moment they are definitely negligent in this area when it comes to female athletes. They are not considering the damage, the potential damage, of putting a male athlete in with a female athlete. So if I was one of those female athletes, I would be trying to pursue this for sure.

“The problem we’ve got is that these female athletes are very young. They are very intimidated. They are very silenced. And the IOC puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the government and the national associations to make their athletes sign documentation which stops them, which takes away their voices. And that is also a problem that we have.”

Khelif and Lin’s presence became headline news after the Italian boxer Angela Carini abandoned her bout against the Algerian fighter after 46 seconds of the fight, claiming that she had never been hit harder.

At the end of Lin’s past two bouts, her opponents have made an X shape with their fingers in an apparent protest relating to the IBA’s alleged discovery that Lin – and Khelif – had male XY chromosomes.

The IBA has said it is unable to publish the results of the gender tests carried out on Khelif and Lin, who are fighting on Friday and Saturday respectively, because of non-disclosure clauses. Chris Roberts, its secretary general, said the two women had a “duty” to the sport to be open and called on them both to be tested again and to make public the results.

He said: “They owe it to their opponents and their community to be upfront and to be honest about all of this. They owe that to their opponents. And, you know, I call for for them to have another test, if that’s the case.”

Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Davies said the IOC had failed women throughout her own career and was doing so again. She said: “People have to look back at the history of the IOC and their horrendous history of looking after female athletes.

“The reason I speak out is, for 20 years, they allowed the East German state to dope young women, 11, 12, 13 years old, full of testosterone. Every single person in the track, in the swimming pool, at the rowing venue, knew exactly what was going on. The IOC did nothing.

“For 20 years they allowed female athletes to be cheated out of their medals and they allowed these young East German girls to be poisoned, to the state that all of them have health issues, and many of them have died. The history of the IOC defending female athletes is atrocious.”

A spokesperson for the IOC said: “All athletes participating in the boxing tournament of Paris 2024 comply with the competition’s eligibility and entry regulations, as well as all applicable medical regulations.”

The spokesperson added: “The guidelines on athlete expression for Paris 2024 … provide a framework for athletes and other Games participants to express their views during the Games and are fully in line with the guidelines implemented for Tokyo 2020 and the Winter Games Beijing 2022, which had provided new and increased opportunities to athletes.”