Boxing Officials Offer Little Clarity on Olympic Eligibility Dispute

The news conference had been billed as an effort by international boxing authorities to clear up the reasons they banned two athletes from a women’s competition last year, and a chance to shed crucial light on what has become the biggest controversy at the Paris Olympics.

Instead, the gathering started 90 minutes late, then veered into the chaotic almost immediately. And when it ended about two hours later, almost nothing about the controversy had been clarified at all.

The head of the International Boxing Association, an organization no longer recognized by the International Olympic Committee to oversee the sport at the Games, had promised answers about why the organization excluded the two boxers, Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan.

Instead, appearing on a giant video screen from a room decorated with religious iconography, the association’s Russian president, Umar Kremlev, delivered wild accusations, personal attacks and employed questionable language when detailing the two women's cases.

Earlier, a boxing official said that blood tests conducted on Khelif and Lin at last year’s world championships revealed they had X and Y chromosomes, the typical male pattern, before Kremlev bluntly said the tests “show they were men.” But he and the other panelists offered no evidence to support that statement. He said he did not know whether the athletes were transgender. The I.O.C. has insisted that they are women. He launched attacks on the Olympic committee, its German president Thomas Bach and the Paris Games themselves.

And in doing so, he most likely ensured that Khelif and Lin will receive even more negative attention, and more online abuse, related to their eligibility only a day before each will return to the ring to fight for an Olympic medal.