'The bitterness of the dispute underpins the urgency as World Boxing tries to bring clarity to a deeply emotive subject. “It’s an extremely complex issue with significant welfare concerns,” Van der Vorst said.
“We have established a working group in line with our medical committee which will develop a sex, age and weight policy. They’re working with medical evidence from a wide range of experts across the world, including the Independent Council for Women’s Sports.
Lin Yu-ting, like Imane Khelif, has not applied for entry to the World Boxing Cup that takes place at the end of March. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian
“They’re developing an updated policy that will determine the eligibility of boxers to participate in World Boxing competitions. It’s important we can deliver a competitive level-playing field for men and women that assures the safety of everyone involved.”
It has been a seismic week for World Boxing after the International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, announced on Monday that his executive board supported the sport’s inclusion at the 2028 Olympics in LA. Until the emergence of World Boxing, which had been founded in 2023 by Van der Vorst in a desperate attempt to salvage boxing’s Olympic future, the IOC had banished the sport to the sporting wilderness.
After suspending the International Boxing Association, the sport’s disgraced former governing body, the IOC had been in charge of the tournament in Paris. The gender eligibility argument became the most acrimonious sporting story of the year. At the 2023 world championships Lin took a swab test that, according to the IBA, contained enough male chromosomes to disqualify her from the women’s event. Khelif had recorded similar results in a test conducted by the IBA. Both boxers had been classified at birth as female and had lived as girls before competing as women.
Van der Vorst said: “I really don’t want to comment about individual boxers. But there’s a lot of misunderstanding when I hear people speaking about transgender athletes. It’s very offensive and misleading because there are no transgenders in boxing. Maybe there is some gender diversity, but that’s something for experts and for us to define in a policy.”
“I’m for all the boxers. What happened in Paris was very sad and I felt there was no proper procedure based on the accusations from the previous international federation [the IBA]. That felt very inappropriate to me.”
Van der Vorst also said that “sometimes these cases are used for political issues and I want to stay away from it. The main objective is to have a level playing-field that assures safety for all participants. We are waiting for the policy from our experts, but the priority for me is sporting integrity and safety.”