Algerian Olympic boxing champion Imane Khelif will not have an appeal hearing heard at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in time for her to compete at the World Boxing Championships which begin in Liverpool on Thursday.
Khelif lodged an appeal with CAS on Monday to determine whether World Boxing are legally allowed to insist that, should she wish to compete in the female category at World Boxing events including the World Championships, Khelif would have to take an SRY gene test which can detect the presence of the Y or male characteristic chromosome.
Khelif's appeal wants to challenge World Boxing's rules, but CAS has told Sky Sports that the hearing will be scheduled on the agreement of the parties and this may take several weeks.
As of Wednesday morning, CAS has listed their upcoming hearings through to September 19 and no hearing involving CAS, Imane Khelif or the Algerian Boxing Federation is listed.
The World Boxing Championships begin in Liverpool on September 4 and conclude on September 14.
Khelif won Olympic women's welterweight gold in Paris last summer having been cleared to compete by the International Olympic Committee, despite the International Boxing Association having banned her from the previous year's World Championships for allegedly failing to meet gender eligibility criteria.
After her gold medal victory, Khelif said: "I am fully qualified to take part in this competition - I am a woman.
"I was born a woman, I've lived as a woman and I've competed as a woman. There's no doubt that there are enemies of success, and that gives my success a special taste because of these attacks."
Who is Imane Khelif?
Khelif rose to global prominence at the 2024 Olympics by winning gold in the female welterweight category, but also by unwittingly being at the centre of a storm in Paris that centred on gender and her eligibility to compete as a female boxer.
Under IOC (Olympic) rules, Khelif was entitled to compete at Paris 2024 as her birth certificate stated she was born female and her passport stated her gender as female, while her father during the Olympics emotionally said that "her girl" was born a girl, brought up a girl and lived as a girl.
Prior to the Olympics, Khelif, along with Taiwan's Lin Yu-ting had been barred from competing at the 2023 Boxing World Championships by the now disgraced IBA (international Boxing Association) as they had determined, without providing any evidence, that Khelif and Yu-ting had failed a gender test.
During Khelif's first bout at the Olympics, her Italian opponent Angela Carini ended the fight after 46 seconds saying she was concerned for her health due to the strength of Khelif's punches.
Immediately a furore began in Paris involving the participation of Khelif and Yu-ting, much of it centred around misinformation and incorrect reporting of the facts.
Why is Khelif not fighting at the World Championships?
Khelif and Yu-ting will not compete at the World Boxing Championships in Liverpool, firstly because neither boxer has been entered into either the long or short entry lists.
The simple answer is they've not been entered by the National Federations. Why they haven't been entered is another question. Khelif had stated previously she wished to compete at future World Boxing organised events, while the coach of Yu-ting last week said she would enter, comply with the rules and aim to box at Liverpool. She has not been entered though and the final opportunity to enter a boxer has now passed.
It's further complicated by a new mandatory rule introduced by World Boxing in May that states any boxer wishing to compete in the female category must undertake a gene-test. Its understood neither Khelif nor Yu-ting have provided World Boxing, the sports governing body, with that test yet.
World Boxing's rules around the female category
World Boxing are a new governing body for the sport. It was only confirmed earlier this year that boxing would be included on the sports programme for the next Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028, and that World Boxing have provisionally been giving the authority to organise IOC/Olympic competitions.
Up until that point, the sport was in serious jeopardy of being left out in the cold as an Olympic sport and perhaps as an amateur sport in general due to the workings of the previous governing body - the IBA - who were banned from organising Olympic boxing competitions at the Tokyo and Paris Olympics due to concerns around integrity, equality, judging and finances.
World Boxing believes it has to bring back credibility, equality, fairness and clarity to boxing, and part of that is by looking to avoid a situation like the controversy that surrounded the two boxers at Paris 2024 from ever happening again.
New rules have been introduced, including, in May this year, a rule stating that boxers who wish to compete in the female category have to take and return a negative SRY test.
An SRY test is a non-evasive cheek swab or blood test that can detect the presence of the Y chromosome which determines male characteristics. The test only has to be taken once but, for a boxer to be eligible to compete at World Boxing sanctioned events like the World Championships, the SRY test is mandatory.
CAS - and what Khelif has had to say?
Previously Khelif has said she was born a girl and raised as a girl, while her passport states her gender as female.
She has also said she is not transgender. She received an apology from World Boxing President Boris van der Vorst earlier this year when the governing body brought in the new mandatory SRY gene test, as they named Khelif in their public communication about the rule. It was felt that Khelif was being singled out.
While neither the Algerian Boxing Federation or Khelif made any public comment about whether she would or wished to compete at the World Boxing Championship, she did lodge an appeal with CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sport), where she wishes to argue that she should not have to provide an SRY test to compete at World Boxing events, including the World Championships in Liverpool.
CAS declined a request to temporarily halt or pause the mandatory SRY test required by World Boxing, but will sit to judge the wider appeal. However, rarely can CAS hearings be arranged quickly due to the often complicated and complex nature of rules and law being argued, and with all parties (World Boxing, Imane Khelif and the Algerian Boxing Federation) having to agree to the terms of the hearing - this can take several weeks.
With the World Boxing Championships running between September 4-14, and CAS having published their latest list of hearings which stretch through to September 19, they cannot hear this appeal before the World Boxing Championships have ended.
