Gender row boxer Lin Yu-Ting reigned supreme and punched her way towards an Olympic gold medal to become the second woman here to hit her critics where it hurts.
Yu-Ting, 28, pummelled Poland’s Julia Szeremeta, 20, over three rounds at Roland Garros to win via unanimous decision and join Imane Khelif of Algeria in successfully seeing off their opponents from outside the ring who claimed the pair were male and should have been barred from the Paris games.
But Yu-Ting’s fight is set to continue after she leaves Paris tomorrow where she and Khelif, 25, were at the centre of the biggest controversy of Paris 2024.
Taiwan’s sports administrators are preparing legal action against the International Boxing Association for the gender claims against her and for allegedly revealing her medical records.
Talks with the International Olympic Committee will continue after Paris to silence the IBA which plunged Golden Girls Yu-Ting and Khelif into a fortnight of acrimony.
Lin Yu-Ting is an Olympic champion after winning the women’s featherweight gold in Paris
Taiwanese Lin beat 20-year-old Polish fighter Julia Szeremeta in Friday’s final at Roland Garros
Yu-Ting and Khelif were disqualified by the IBA from last year’s Boxing World Championships in India where they allegedly failed gender tests.
Taiwanese officials are particularly aggrieved because they say they conducted their own tests on their boxer in the run up to Paris which confirmed her status in the women’s 57kg category.
Yu-Ting was targeted by two of her previous ring opponents after she had defeated them.
Turkey’s Esra Yildiz made the double ‘X’ sign with her index fingers just as the Taiwanese boxer’s Bulgarian opponent had done in the previous bout.
Mail chromosomes are designated by an X and a Y, while females have two Xs.
But Yu-Ting and Khelif’s progress onto gold medals has delivered a major rebuff to their critics.
Olympic chiefs’ will also feel they have been vindicated in their decision not to ban her and Khelif.
On Friday Khelif won her gold amid huge support inside the boxing arena and from those watching on TV in her country.
Imane Khelif won a gold medal for Algeria in the women’s welterweight event on Friday night
Khelif (left) defeated China’s Liu Yang by unanimous decision in Friday’s welterweight final
Yu-Ting also defied the storm that has followed her into the ring and bowed and saluted the 13,000 crowd at Roland Garros and thanked them for the support.
Yu-Ting, who stands at 5ft 9in, was registered female at birth, as was Khelif, and both are listed as female in their passports.
Olympic chiefs have defended the involvement in Paris 2024 of both Khelif and Yu-Ting who began boxing at the age of 13.
Yu-Ting’s Olympic officials called the accusations discriminatory and declared them a deliberate attempt to undermine the boxer’s mental state.
The IOC said it made its eligibility decisions on boxers based on the gender-related rules that applied at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
Several sports have updated their gender rules over the past three years, including World Aquatics, World Athletics and the International Cycling Union. The track body also last year tightened rules on athletes with differences in sex development.
The IOC is in charge of boxing in Paris because it has revoked the Olympic status of the International Boxing Association following years of governance problems, a lack of financial transparency and many perceived instances of corruption in judging and refereeing.
Lin, 28, pictured waving to the crowd before entering the ring ahead of her gold medal fight
The IBA is controlled by its president Umar Kremlev, who is Russian. He brought in Russian state-owned Gazprom as its primary sponsor and moved much of the IBA’s operations to Russia.
However Olympic officials say the matter regarding the two boxers is a ‘minefield’ and that no forensic and unquestionable scientific evidence has been provided to prove both athletes were not women.
IOC chief Bach said: ‘We are talking about women’s boxing. We have two boxers who are born as a woman, who were raised as women, who have passport as women, who have competed for many years as women. This is the clear definition of a woman.’
But the IBA genetic tests showed that Khelif and Yu-Ting have male XY chromosomes in their DNA, but neither are transgender.
Celebrities such as JK Rowling, British Olympian swimmer Sharron Davies and double Olympic gold medal-winning ex-boxer Nicola Adams have spoken out against their involvement in women’s sport. Former Prime Minister Lynn Truss has also been a critic.
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