Olympic champion Imane Khelif is skipping the Eindhoven Box Cup in the Netherlands less than a week after World Boxing announced mandatory sex testing for all athletes.
The Algerian boxer, who won gold at the Paris Games last summer amid scrutiny over her eligibility, did not register in time for the event before applications closed on Thursday.
“The decision of Imane’s exclusion is not ours. We regret it,” tournament media director Dirk Renders told The Associated Press.
The 26-year-old Khelif had intended to return to international competition at the Eindhoven tournament this weekend before World Boxing announced its new sex testing policy last Friday. The governing body specifically mentioned Khelif, saying she’d have to screened to be approved to fight at any upcoming events, including the Eindhoven Box Cup.
Eindhoven mayor Jeroen Dijsselbloem criticized World Boxing’s decision.
“As far as we are concerned, all athletes are welcome in Eindhoven. Excluding athletes based on controversial `gender tests’ certainly does not fit in with that,” Dijsselbloem wrote in a letter addressed to the Dutch Boxing Federation and International Boxing Federation. “We are expressing our disapproval of this decision today and are calling on the organization to admit Imane Khelif after all.”
Khelif won a gold medal at the Paris Olympics last summer amid international scrutiny on her and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, another gold medal winner. The previous governing body for Olympic boxing, the Russian-dominated International Boxing Association, had disqualified both fighters from its 2023 world championships after claiming they failed unspecified eligibility tests.
But the IBA was banished for decades of misdeeds and controversy. The IOC ran the past two Olympic boxing tournaments in its place, and it applied the sex eligibility rules used in previous Olympics. Khelif and Lin were eligible to compete under those standards.
World Boxing has since been provisionally approved as the boxing organizer at the 2028 Los Angeles Games and has faced pressure from boxers and their federations to create sex eligibility standards.
Its president, Boris van der Vorst, apologized after Khelif was singled out in the governing body’s announcement last week.
Khelif planned to defend her welterweight gold medal at the LA Games, but some boxers and their federations have already spoken out against her inclusion
Khelif won gold at the Eindhoven event last year, defeating Australia’s Marissa Williamson-Pohlman in the final in a warmup to the Paris Olympics.
The Algerian also competed at the Tokyo Games in 2021, in the lightweight division, losing in the quarterfinals to eventual gold medalist Kellie Harrington of Ireland.