The Paris 2024 Olympics started with controversy — its opening tableau with a blue Dionysus singing about how nudity could bring world peace will never be forgotten — and it is ending with controversy.
One of those controversies concerns the Chinese Olympic swim team. Despite testing positive for banned substances in 2021 and 2022, the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA,` did not suspend the Chinese athletes, accepting the Chinese government’s investigative conclusion that the athletes’ food had been contaminated without their knowledge by a hotel at which they were staying. Because there was no public disclosure at the time and because the athletes were not suspended, the Chinese swimmers were eligible to compete in the 2024 Olympics. The positive tests were revealed by The New York Times only in April of this year; the revelations shocked the swimming world. Other swimmers at the 2024 Olympics wondered why WADA seemed to no longer be the guardian of fairness it was designed to be.
Adam Peaty, a medal-winning British swimmer, raised the question of fairness: “In sport, one of my favorite quotes I’ve seen lately is, ‘There’s no point in winning if you don’t win it fair.’ I think you know that truth in your heart. Even if you touch and you know you’re cheating, you’re not winning, right?”
The CEO of the US Anti-Doping Agency added, “It’s even more devastating to learn the World Anti-Doping Agency and the Chinese Anti-Doping Agency secretly, until now, swept these positives under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” He went on to say, “All of those with dirty hands in burying these positives and suppressing the voices of courageous whistle-blowers must be held accountable to the fullest extent of the rules and law.”
Fairness. Rules. Without these things, there is no sport. There can be no meaningful winning and losing. Cheating in the Olympics has a long pedigree, which is why watchdog agencies such as WADA were created. The most notorious cases were the female East German athletes who were doped with testosterone in order to win Olympic medals. Ironically, those who spoke up at the time were branded “sore losers.” Now, there is a strong effort to correct the record books so that the real winners will receive the recognition they deserve.
Which brings us to Olympic women’s boxing, which has become a tragedy for all those competing at the 2024 Games. It is a sorry tale of the dereliction of duty of the International Olympic Committee, which could have prevented the tragedy, but chose not to.
An overview of the timeline is in order. Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting were raised female, but the International Boxing Association, or IBA, announced that two rounds of genetic testing in 2022 and 2023 showed the boxers had XY chromosomes. As in similar cases around the world and as explained by geneticists, it is probable the two athletes were mistakenly assigned at birth as female due to ambiguous external phenotype. They were raised as female; they and everyone around them sincerely believed them female. The heart of the tragedy for these boxers is that neither anticipated the tests’ results.
Because of the testing results in 2022 and 2023, performed in Turkey and in India by accredited laboratories, both boxers were disqualified by the IBA from competing henceforth in the female category of boxing. Lin chose not to appeal the ban to the Court of Sports Arbitration; Khelif began the appeal and then did not move forward with it. The IOC was notified of all of these developments.
But then in June 2023, the IOC stepped in and disqualified the IBA as the governing body for the sport of boxing, citing financial irregularities and a bias towards Russia. Given that it was the IBA that had banned Lin and Khelif, these athletes were now technically unbanned, even though the test results were not challenged by either athlete or by the IOC.
Now IOC rules would govern who could compete at the 2024 Olympics. However, the IOC itself did not set any standard for inclusion in the female category besides what has been called the “passport standard,” which simply means that if your passport says female, that is good enough for the IOC to include you in women’s sporting events. The IOC stated it would defer to the sporting associations for more stringent and specific rules on inclusion, but with the IBA disqualified, there was no boxing association to step into the breach. So the wholly inadequate “passport standard” was applied instead.
Lin is progressing towards a gold medal in the featherweight division, and Khelif won the gold medal in the welterweight finals Friday night. Some of their opponents have signaled that they believe fighting those who may have undergone male puberty is unfair and unsafe. As in 1976, when the East Germans swept the field due to excessive testosterone, these opponents have wrongly been labelled “sore losers.” Khelif and Lin have also received online abuse.
It’s a mess. And it didn’t have to be. The blame falls to the IOC, with its ridiculous “passport standard.” Passports don’t fight in a boxing ring — bodies do. And bodies can be severely harmed in a boxing ring, especially if you’re pitting a body with 162% advantage in punching strength against one without such an advantage. The real differences between sexed bodies means that those who run the Olympics have the crucial obligation to concern themselves about the material reality of bodies, unfashionable as that may be.
Everything that the USADA has said about the Chinese swimmers case applies here as well: test results swept under the carpet; those who complain having their voices suppressed; rules disregarded.
Ross Tucker, who helped set the standards for World Rugby, has rightly pointed out that when sports organizations make rules to protect the female category of sport, there are three possible priorities: fairness, inclusion and safety. But in the women’s category, you cannot achieve all three, he asserts: You must pick. If inclusion becomes your top priority, then you are jettisoning fairness and safety for women.
And that is what has happened with IOC oversight of women’s boxing. Tucker justifiably concludes: “The IOC are defending their choice: inclusion over safety and fairness. It’s that choice that necessitates the sidestep of the test result, to instead undermine the test result. If you’re trying to make sense of anything the IOC says on this, just remember — they’ve made a choice, and everything has to now justify that choice. Pretty simple.”
It may be pretty simple, but it’s wrong. This dereliction of duty by the IOC creates unfairness, and because it’s been made unfair, safety has been severely compromised. Olympic women’s boxing is no longer a sport, due to the IOC: It’s now but a dangerous travesty.
Valerie M. Hudson is a university distinguished professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University and a Deseret News contributor. Her views are her own.