Boxing-Taiwan’s Lin will not compete in world championships

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TAIPEI (Reuters) -Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting, one of two boxers at the centre of a gender dispute at last year’s Paris Olympics, will not compete at the upcoming world championships in Liverpool, World Boxing confirmed on Tuesday.

Last month, governing body World Boxing announced that women boxers at the world championships will have to undergo mandatory sex testing, as part of a new eligibility policy. The policy came just over a year after Lin and Algerian Imane Khelif both won gold in Paris amid a gender-eligibility row.

Lin’s coach Tseng Tzu-chiang had said on August 21 that she had no plans to skip the world championships.

“She has not considered withdrawing from the competition because of the new gender tests. We will submit all the relevant documents requested by the organisers, as part of normal procedures,” Tseng had said at the time.

However, a source at the Taiwan boxing association said Lin would not be going to the world championships, declining to provide additional details.

World Boxing later also confirmed that Lin will not compete at the event.

“She was not entered into the competition by her National Federation,” World Boxing told Reuters in an email.

The world championships will take place from September 4 to 14 and are the first to be organised by World Boxing since it replaced the International Boxing Association earlier this year.

On Monday, Khelif appealed to sport’s highest court against a World Boxing decision barring her from upcoming events unless she undergoes genetic sex testing.

The appeal seeks to overturn the ruling and allow Khelif to compete at the world championships without having the test, the Court of Arbitration for Sport said, adding that it had dismissed her request to suspend the decision while the case is heard.

(Reporting by Pearl Josephine Nazare in Bengaluru and Ben Blanchard in Taipei;Editing by Christian Radnedge)