The IBA Held a Press Conference About Boxing’s Gender Controversy. It Was a Chaotic Mess

The International Boxing Association (IBA), which has spent these Olympics ripping the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its president, Thomas Bach, and calling into question the gender eligibility of two boxers in the competition—igniting international controversy and exposing the boxers to torrents of online abuse—came to Paris this morning to hold a press conference in an ornate, airless ballroom with mirrors and a cracked ceiling. The task at hand, supposedly, was to provide documentary evidence that Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-Ting of Chinese Taipei, who through a pair of preliminary-round victories are now assured at least a bronze medal at the Paris Games, do not belong in the women’s boxing category. Khelif fights in her 66-kg semifinal match, against Janjaem Suwannapheng of Thailand, on Tuesday. Yu-Ting faces Esra Yildiz Kahraman of Turkey in a 57-kg Wednesday semifinal bout.

If anything, the IBA threw even more confusion into the mix—and is likely to expose Khelif and Yu-Ting to more animosity. And if the organization was trying to boost its bona fides and prove it should be running boxing in the Olympics, the IBA failed miserably on that front.

First of all, this rogue press event—held during the heat of competition, overshadowing exploits on the field of play—started about an hour late, with no official explanation granted. There was chirping that Umar Kremlev, the president of the IBA, was going to make a surprise appearance remotely, and technicians were working on the Russian translation capabilities. The three principals who were slated to speak – IBA Secretary General and CEO Chris Roberts; Dr. Ioannis Filippatos, president of the European Union Boxing Committee and former chair of the IBA’s medical committee; and IBA coaches-committee chairman Gabriele Martelli – were all seated and looked ready to get going. “Guys, you are wasting our time, my god!” a German reporter shouted. 

No one disagreed with that assessment.

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Kremlev finally appeared on an electronic screen behind the live speakers. But no one could hear him as he spoke, a 2020-era Zoom issue (maybe he was muted). Twice during the approximately 90-minute session of filibustering, chaotic press questioning, and overall unpleasantness, the microphone feedback sent shudders through the hearts of the some 100 reporters packed into a sweaty room. AV errors aside, the more serious problem was the messaging. 

Roberts, for example, started out claiming that the IBA didn’t want to overshadow the Olympics and was only touching down in Paris because of Khelif’s victory last week over Angela Carini of Italy: Carini withdrew after 46 seconds; the controversy exploded from there.

That argument felt specious, since Kremlev had been trying to draw attention to Khelif and Yu-Ting and their supposed ineligibility well before the Games, and many journalists, and a portion of the public, were attuned to it. He told a Russian news agency in 2023 that unspecified tests “proved” that they  “had XY chromosomes and were thus excluded from sports events.” This included the IBA’s 2023 Women's World Boxing Championships in New Delhi, from which the organization disqualified the two boxers. 

After the opening ceremonies on July 26, Kremlev wrote on X that “the 2024 Olympic Games are outright sodomy and the destruction of traditional values throughout the world and Thomas Bach is responsible for this.” 

Today Kremlev offered an opening “statement” that was a rambling, nearly 20-minute bizarre airing of grievances. Rather than address the subject at hand, he started by criticizing the opening ceremonies, an event in everyone’s rearview mirror. “As a Christian, the Olympic opening ceremony was something horrible,” he said in Russian through an interpreter. “It was horrible for Christians and Muslim people around the world, all people with a spiritual life.” He argued that Khelif and Yu-Ting’s participation in the Olympics was unfair. “Today we are destroying sport, especially feminine sport,” he said. He went on to claim Bach was corrupt, held himself and the IBA as women’s-rights crusaders—all four press-conference speakers were male—and said the IBA, unlike the IOC, was a true democratic, transparent organization (the IOC has said it stripped the IBA of its governing authority, in part, due to its lack of transparency regarding its financial ties to Gazprom, the Russian state-owned energy company. The IBA said it ended its relationship with Gazprom in 2023. Kremlev said on Monday that he had nothing to hide.)

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Kremlev seemed hung up on the prize money he said he would be offering the women defeated by Khelif and Yu-Ting at the Olympics, and accused the IOC of hoarding revenues and failing to distribute them to athletes. He returned to knocking the opening ceremonies and Bach and continued to brandish his role as equality and fairness advocate. 

“It was a chaotic farce,” IOC spokesperson Mark Adams wrote to TIME in an email, in response to questions about the organization’s response to Kremlev and the IBA. “The organization and the content of this press conference tells you everything you need to know about their governance and credibility.”

Filippatos brandished his credentials as a gynecologist and in-vitro fertilization specialist and argued that science clearly defines biological sex, despite evidence to the contrary. Medicine, he said, “is not opinion. I know who is woman and man.” He and Kremlev both implied that Khelif and Yu-Ting could be transgender athletes, despite assertions from both athletes’ camps that they are not, that they were born as women and grew up as women. 

“It may be transgender women,” said Kremlev through an interpreter. “Maybe not.” Kremlev said it was up to Khelif and Tu-Ting to prove that they were women, saying that he, for example, could produce documents to “prove I was a real man, not a woman.” 

Reporters shouted over one another and threw out questions about the salaries of IBA members and potential political alignments with right-wing politicians in Italy. At no time during the disorganized, frustrating gathering did any IBA member express a shred of sympathy for the online bullying and abuse that Khelif and Yu-Ting have faced.

I finally got a chance to ask Kremlev for his message to the women. At first, he said he didn’t understand the question. I tried again. He didn’t really answer it. He said Algeria and Taiwan were great countries. He fell back on the rules-are-rules canard And he noted that the athletes had high testosterone levels, “like a man.” (The IBA previously said the athletes did not undergo a testosterone exam.) He said he didn’t know these two boxers personally and that the IBA would be ready to offer psychological services if needed (why would the boxers possibly go to the organization causing them heartache for help?). 

Kremlev said he was “not here to say they’re bad, others are good. We want people to abide by the rules, that’s all.”

In all, despite the buildup, the IBA didn’t offer much new. Despite the officials claiming repeatedly that the test results are private, Roberts gave a timeline of testing for the Khelif and Yu-Ting and promised documentation. As of Wednesday night in Paris, the documentation hasn’t been posted to the IBA website, as press rep assured TIME would happen.

Some exasperated reporters left early. Khelif’s fellow Algerian Olympic boxer, Roumaysa Boualam, entered the room as the press conference was wrapped in the Algerian flag and shouted her support for Khelif in protest of the IBA.   

There’s a very fair discussion to be had about gender participation in sports. It’s a nuanced, difficult subject. This was not the way to do it. By coming to Paris and adding to an already combustible situation, the IBA failed Khelif and Yu-Ting. It failed all athletes, really. It certainly failed itself.