Mick Hartley

This is a very useful overview of the situation, from Alan Abrahamson:

Part of this has to do with the political dispute between the IOC and the IBA, which ultimately saw the IOC banish the IBA in June 2023. Ordinarily, the IBA would have been in charge of boxing at the Olympics. But because of the politics, the IOC ran boxing in Tokyo in 2021 and is doing so again at the Paris Games.

The root of the political dispute is the IOC’s relationship – or lack of one – with Russia, personified by IBA president Umar Kremlev, who is not only Russian but has ties with top Russian leadership….

Meanwhile, because of Kremlev’s Kremlin relationships, some significant number of media outlets are highly disinclined to believe anything the IBA says. Because almost no journalists in the Western media have spoken to Kremlev personally, fewer still have reason to trust a word he says. This why-trust-the-IBA is a position the IOC has explicitly sought to encourage – indeed, not disputing that the IBA told it in June 2023 about the XY tests but saying, essentially, without offering evidence on the point itself about the tests, that nothing the IBA says is credible.

This is why getting to the facts in this matter is so essential.

And, too, why it’s hugely frustrating for not only so many of the ladies and gentlemen of the press – as well as keen readers and viewers – who want to see the tests, but cannot, because of privacy reasons.

Which IBA officials made clear at Monday’s news conference.

Indeed, Chris Roberts, the federation’s chief executive, said the IBA had gotten be-careful letters over the past 24 hours from the national Olympic committees of Algeria and Chinese Taipei.

With all of that as backdrop, facts, and in this context it is helpful in assessing the documents to turn to a saying that any first-year law student knows: res ipsa loquitur.

This means: the thing speaks for itself.

Put another way, whatever the noise, the test results say what they say.

And the test results say: both Khelif and Lin are men.