Paris 2024, Bulgarian boxer Staneva loses to intersex athlete. Then the sensational gesture –

Lin Yu Ting, one of two boxers who failed gender tests at last year’s world championships and were disqualified by the IBA, has secured an Olympic medal at the 2024 Paris Games after beating Svetlana Kamenova Staneva in the 57kg quarterfinals. Top-seeded Lin of Taiwan, which the International Olympic Committee calls Chinese Taipei, defeated the Bulgarian 5-0 in a unanimous points decision. Algeria’s Imane Khelif, who like Lin was disqualified from the 2023 women’s world championships for failing to meet gender eligibility requirements, is also assured of at least a bronze after beating Hungary’s Anna Luca Hamori in the 66kg quarterfinals on Saturday. After their semifinals next week, there will be only one final and no third-place bout. Both semifinal losers will receive bronze.

IOC President Thomas Bach said there was “never any doubt” that the two boxers are women, as they were raised as women, have women on their passports and have long competed as women. They were kicked out of the 2023 world championships by the International Boxing Association (IBA). But the Olympic program is not run by the IBA after it was stripped of its recognition by the IOC due to governance issues. The IOC is effectively running boxing itself. There is much speculation that their cases are similar to those of South Africa’s two-time Olympic 800-meter champion Caster Semenya, who some doctors have classified as intersex. She is no longer allowed to run the 800 meters without taking testosterone-suppressing drugs. Critics say this is a different issue, as boxing is about punching and women are being put in danger by facing people in the ring with much larger muscles and power.

And it was the Bulgarian boxer Svetlana Kamenova Staneva, after being defeated by the Taiwanese, who turned to the audience and drew an ‘X’ with her fingers to signify that she has female chromosomes.