Olympics President Thomas Bach defends sex-disputed boxers, says sex tests are ‘not reliable’

Don’t ask International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach what a woman is.

The IOC chief said Friday he knows of no reliable scientific way to determine the biological sex of athletes, frustrating advocates for women’s sports with two sex-disputed athletes on the verge of winning medals in women’s boxing at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

“It is not as easy as some in this culture war may want to portray it, that XX or XY [chromosomes] is a clear distinction between men and women,” said Mr. Bach at the final Olympics press conference. “This is scientifically not true anymore. And therefore these two are women and they have the right to participate in the women’s competition.”

Bach noted that the IOC discontinued sex tests in 1999, ahead of the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

“We had so-called sex tests until 1999, and then science has told us that they are not reliable anymore, that it does not work with regard to the chromosomes and with regard to other measurements,” Bach said. “We were also told that these kinds of tests can be against human rights because they are too intrusive.”

He added that “this has nothing to do with inclusion in any way.”

His response exasperated those calling for the Olympics to bring back sex testing, including Canadian track coach and former athlete Linda Blade, who called his response “absurd.”

“How can #IOC president Thomas Bach be clinging to these two false claims?!” she asked on X. “NO—the sex verification screens are not ‘outdated.’ They are better than ever at detecting males.”

She also said that the cheek swab used to detect male and female chromosomes “does not violate human rights.”

“In fact, the violation is of women’s rights to safety and fairness by choosing to not [screen] out male advantage in #sports,” Blade said.

IOC is gaslighting the world. Bach says there’s no solid scientific way to tell who is a woman! He is taking us all for fools. pic.twitter.com/imUGgwnTv3

— FairPlayForWomen (@fairplaywomen) August 9, 2024

The Women’s Rights Network, a British organization, called the press conference “a master class in defending the indefensible—the indefensible being to allow boxers who had failed previous sex tests (ie are males) to compete at the Olympics and possibly win Gold medals in women’s boxing.”

The two fighters—Algerian welterweight Imane Khelif and Taiwanese featherweight Lin Yu-ting—are slated to fight in the final rounds of their divisions in the next two days despite being disqualified from last year’s women’s world championships for failing sex tests.

The International Boxing Association alerted the Olympics to the test results, but soon afterward the IOC dropped the association as the Olympic boxing authority over governance, finance and judging issues.

Bach shrugged off the International Boxing Association’s test results. The Olympics dropped the association last year as its boxing authority over governance, financial and judging-integrity issues.

“We would be more than pleased to look into it, but what is not possible is that somebody saying this is not a woman, just by looking at somebody, or by falling prey to a defamation campaign by a not-credible organization with highly political interests,” he said.

The Olympics has insisted that “this is not a transgender issue,” spurring speculation that one or both of the athletes have a Difference of Sexual Development known as 46, XY, meaning that they were born with ambiguous genitalia and internal testes, but produce male-level testosterone.

Neither athlete has commented publicly on why they were disqualified last year. The IBA has said it cannot offer details on the results due to privacy concerns, but Lin did not appeal the decision and Khelif ultimately dropped an appeal.

Italian boxer Angela Carini quit her match against Khelif after 46 seconds, saying she had “never been hit so hard in my life.”