Taipei: Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting will not attend the 2025 World Boxing Championships in Liverpool due to a lack of response regarding her sex tests from the organizer, World Boxing (WB).
According to Focus Taiwan, the Chinese Taipei Boxing Association (CTBA) announced that it had submitted all relevant tests to the WB federation but had not received a response as of Monday, the day of departure for the championships. The CTBA decided Lin should skip the event to protect their athletes from traveling to the United Kingdom without a guarantee of participation.
Lin, the gold medalist in the women’s 57-kilogram boxing at the 2024 Paris Olympics for Taiwan, has faced controversy over her gender since the event, despite the International Olympic Committee’s confirmation of her eligibility as a female boxer. She has since missed multiple international competitions, including a year-end event in the U.K. in 2024, after WB questioned her eligibility upon arrival.
WB President Boris van der Vorst later apologized for the absence of clear gender testing policies. However, Lin again withdrew from the Thailand Open in May 2025 due to disagreements over sex testing methods. On May 30, WB announced a mandate for athletes over 18 to take PCR genetic tests to determine their sex at birth and eligibility to compete in its games.
Lin opted out of the World Boxing Cup in June, as Taiwanese officials cited a lack of transparency about “complementary measures” regarding the sex test. On August 20, the federation confirmed its sex testing standards, stating that testing results will determine whether the tested athlete is female or male.
The CTBA reported convening a medical team of experts in genetics, physiology, and sports medicine over a month ago to discuss sex testing for athletes and actively reached out to WB since August for clear participation regulations. They expressed hope for a prompt response from WB, emphasizing that Lin’s eligibility issue “cannot drag on like this.”
According to sources, WB plans to issue a decision after four to six weeks of discussions on its policies. Lin’s gender controversy first emerged when she was disqualified from the 2023 Women’s World Boxing Championships by the International Boxing Association (IBA) for failing a sex verification test. The IBA, later stripped of Olympic recognition by the International Olympic Committee over governance and financial issues, reignited the controversy before and during the Paris Games.