Don't forget Ewa Klobukowska...

To most the name Ewa Klobukowska will get a blank stare. Even among those who know, and love, sports. Those who follow athletics, may know her though, and those sports fans in Poland are much more likely to recognise the name than those outside of Poland. But for those unaware Ewa was a sensational athlete in the 1960’s. Aged 17 she competed at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, as part of a very strong Polish team that came 7th overall, behind the US, Soviet Union, Japan, a United Team of Germany, Italy and Hungary. They claimed 23 medals in total, the 6th highest, including 7 golds, and beating sporting powerhouses like Australia, Great Britain and Yugoslavia, who had an underwhelming games with just 5 total medals.

Among the medals Poland took were the women's 100m Bronze and the 4 by 100m women's relay, with Ewa taking the bronze and being part of the Gold medal winning team. Just a year later she broke the women's world record for the women's 100m, and the following year, 1966, she was the boss of sprinting, taking 2 golds and a silver at the European Championships in Budapest. At that point in time it was thought she would be a track star. One of the true legends of sprinting of the era.

In 1967 however her career was cut short at the 1967 European Cup in Kiev, then part of the USSR. The IAAF had enacted, against the advice of Geneticists, a gender passport system. A flawed gender passport system.

Maciej Petruczenko, a friend of Ewa’s and a Polish journalist, is quoted as saying “All of our competitors (Polish) were tested in Budapest. Among others, Ewa Kłobukowska and Irena Kirszenstein "paraded" naked before the commission. Then, an additional criterion appeared in the gender tests - chromosomal. It was assumed that if out of 46 chromosomes, two of the ones determining gender were XX chromosomes - we were dealing with a woman, and if the XY configuration was created - it was an indication of a man. However, nature turns out to be much more complicated and not everything is so clear in every case. In Budapest, Ewa "passed" the test, but in Wuppertal, before the semi-final of the European Cup, she was tested using the chromosomal method. An unusual XXY configuration was found and it was decided that she should not compete.

Geneticists warned that the method was very imprecise and could not be used to determine gender. However, the heads of the international athletics association remained deaf to these remarks. Coach Bugała believes that the officials from Germany simply wanted to get rid of inconvenient rivals.”

Now even in 1967 they had discovered the unusual XXY Chromosomal configuration, but it wasn’t that simple. Of course it wasn’t.

As mentioned by Petruczenko had the German team pushing for Poland not to send their two female, the event was coming on the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution, where women had essentially battled against the Bolhkeviks. The political situation, far too complex to go into in depth here, had essentially seen the USSR turn their backs on Poland, an ally, in this dispute.They had talent he German’s side, and not only that but had singled out Polish women, the main challenge in many eyes to the German and USSR women’s teams.

Teresa Sukniewicz, a Polish hurlder who set 3 world records later on, spoke about what happened in Kiev.
“We were taken straight off the plane for a gynecological examination, it was the first time in my life that I had one. Please note that no other team was examined, only us! I was nineteen years old and for me, as well as for my friends, it was a great trauma. I still feel great turmoil when I talk about those events. The activists of the Polish union should have taken us home on the spot.”

“We didn’t protest because we were too surprised by what was happening. The examination was taking place in the hotel corridor. They put a table there, sat down behind it, you went in and had to sit in a gynecological chair. The commission was just… watching us. Just perverts. We didn’t talk about it afterwards, you wanted to forget about it as soon as possible. It was just horrible. There was information that Ewa wasn’t starting, and we had no idea why. A day or two after the competition, I got an Italian newspaper from a friend and saw a picture of Ewa and a terrible title: “Ewa Kłobukowska a man”.”

Ewa’s career was effectively over. She had been branded not a woman. The IAAF stripped her of her records, she was castigated from sport, and forgotten about by Poland in a shameful act by the Polish government of the time. She had very few supporting her, with some reports that were it not for former athlete Maria Kwaśniewska, who was then a member of the board of the Polish Athletics Association, Ewa would have committed suicide.

Ewa would change her number after receiving prank calls, she would eventually move to Czechoslovakia to begin a new chapter of her life, and give birth to a child in 1968, a son. Something, I think we can all agree, proved her to be a woman, much more than the gender testing proved her to be a man. Decades later it was reported that she had never received an apology from her country, though she would later move back to Poland, from those who had abandoned her. Those who had found it easier to call her a man than to suspect political dirty games were at hand.

So why have I spent the last 1000 (ish) words discussing a Polish sprinter? Well because the situation is very, very similar to what appears to have been going on with two Olympic boxers, in another case shrouded in politics, distrusted testing, and something akin to pseudoscience rather than actual science. Using something simple where simple doesn’t apply. This time however the nations themselves have done what Poland failed to do. They have told the authorities what they think of the situation by getting behind their athletes, supporting them, not tossing them aside like pieces of meat, for the consumption of the media.

The boxers in question, like Ewa, won Olympic gold, with both Imane Khelif and Lin Yu Ting winning medals in boxing. Both of them have been subjected to incredible speculation, vitriol, and in the age of social media it has been incessant. Like in Ewa’s case, there is politics running through things, there is a distrust of the organisation, and although the USSR is no more, their successor in Russia are still involved.

Lets start with the simple things. IBA have had a corruption problem for years, but this particularly case can probably be tracked back just a few years. To when Wu Ching-kuo was it’s leader. Wu, from Taiwan, was the man that essentially showed just how corrupt it was, by completely abusing his position, with allegations of financial mismanagement and accounting irregularities against him, which saw him lose a vote of no confidence, and try to fight on to keep the leadership, before finally stepping down in 2017, after being in charge since 2006. He had been there 11 years and made IBA into a joke and came close to bankrupting it. 

Wu was then replaced by Gafur Rakhimov from Uzbekistan, who was in charge for 20 months, before stepping down in July 2019. Rakhimov had long been accused of a number of crimes, including being part of a drug trafficking network, and the Mafia, with the US placing financial sanctions on him, and whilst he was never charged, and did win defamation suits in a number of countries the allegations remain. With the IOC suspended the IBA of their responsibilities for running the Olympics due to the mess they’d got themselves in with Wu and Rakhimov.

Then came Russian Umar Kremlev, the current president of IBA (which rebranded to IBA in 2021), who has been in charge since late 2020 and made a number of questionable decisions that have seen the IOC stand by their guns and keep IBA away from the Olympics, a decision that still grates on Kremlev, who has ran a campaign against IOC President Thomas Bach, repeatedly calling him a “sodomite”.

Kremlev is, to say the least, his own man. At least when it comes to how AIBA is ran, he described himself as "the most clean candidate", which when two pigs roll in shit doesn't mean either is clean. He then brought Hungarian István Kovács on board, appointing him as the General Secretary of IBA. Under Kremlev the IBA inked a deal with Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, paid off their debts, and secured their financial future. They also signed a drug testing agreement with the International Testing Agency (ITA). In 2021, to show they had changed, IBA, the AIBA, released a report showing that bouts had been manipulated for the purpose of money, be it for AIBA, National Federations, Olympic Committees or the hosts.

It appeared as if Kremlev was indeed the man set to put IBA back at the front of amateur boxing after the mess he had inherited. Then in 2022 he started to undo a lot of the good work he and his team had done. The goodwill they had started to create would begin to show cracks.

Originally IBA followed much of the sporting community in suspending the ability of Russian and Belarusian athletes from competing under their flag, members of IBA sought to see IBA look into it's relationship with the Russian Boxing Federation, as well as it's financial dependence on Gazprom, whilst more of the IBA operations moved to Russia. It was suggested that Kremlev was a close friend of Vladimir Putin, and that Russia was looking to essentially take over IBA. In late 2022 IBA reversed their decision on Russian and Belarusain athletes, whilst also suspending the Ukraine Boxing Federation, citing "government interference", when they had a less than pro-Kremlev leader.

Also in 2022 Dutch Boxing Federation president Boris van der Vorst looked to run against Kremlev, but was deemed ineligible 1 day before the vote, leaving Kremlev unopposed, the decision was overturned by CAS and the IBA voted against a new election. Essentially telling CAS (we’ll talk about CAS a little bit later) that their decision didn't matter, as the organisation didn't want another vote. During this mess Kremlev also sought to change “Olympic boxing” to “IBA boxing”, despite the IOC still not giving IBA any responsibilities for boxing at the Olympics. In 2023 a number of notable national boxing bodies boycott the 2023 World Championships, including the US, UK, Poland, Switzerland, Netherlands, Ireland, Czechia, Sweden and Canada, before launching World Boxing, essentially a renegade group that had gotten sick of Kremlev, and were looking to secure boxing’s place on the Olympic Schedule. Soon after this we get to two important points.

One was the IOC officially choosing to remove recognition from IBA, citing “governance, finances, and corruption”, doing so under Kremlev’s leadership. A point of contention that is still being felt to this day, and likely why Kremlev takes great delight in acting like a petty child towards Thomas Bach.

The other was the 2023 Women’s World Championships, which took place in March in New Delhi, where the positive tests for Khelif and Lin took place. A Championship that saw rules changing mid-tournament, definitions of female and male being set mid championship, and other changes, much akin to the situation that had affected Ewa 55 years earlier with the IAAF bringing in a very elementary understanding of gender. The IBA disqualified both fighters mid tournament, and whilst they claimed both had failed the same test in 2022, they chose not to negate the results from that tournament, or suspend them pending an investigation, or change the rules in the wake of those results. Given that IBA’s own tests suggested they were ineligible it really needs to be asked as to why they waited until both had fought in the semi-finals, before disqualifying them. Essentially leaving their biggest women’s tournament of the year with results that, if we’re to trust IBA, have no integrity at all.

Following the Women’s championships Lin went through a series offender tests back home, with the Taiwan Ministry of Education Sports Administration saying there was no irregularities at all, adding that she had under-gone 10 doping tests and not shown any elevated testosterone either, and had qualified as female under the rules of the 2022 Asian Games, which took place between September and October 2023, in Hangzhou, China.  She won gold, and along the way beat Parveen Hooda, who did actually fail a drug test at the Games.

Having looked at what Lin did between the World Championships and the Olympics, it’s fair to also talk about what Khelif did. She took part in the African Olympic qualifiers, took part in an USA International tournament and won the 2024 Eindhoven cup, winning 9 fights in a row, with 3 close decisions along the way.

One of the big questions was why didn’t they appeal the testing results. Whilst this is hard to know there is a few things to consider, especially when it comes to the IBA’s previous when it comes to CAS. After all they determined a contender to run against Kremlev wasn’t eligible and didn’t rerun the vote when CAS over-ruled them, essentially showing total contempt to a CAS  decision. They were also having their own case against the IOC’s decision to remove their recognition running at the same time, a case literally run on the governance, processes and integrity of IBA. It would seem unlikely that CAS would have two cases, running concurrently regarding the processes and governance of IBA, which would be what the fighters would likely be questioning. IBA also appealed the original decision against them when it came to the IOC, with that appealing not ending until April this year. Had the fighters had to wait for the ongoing case to finish they’d have missed out on qualifying for the Olympics.

The question as to why those two were singled out, much like Ewa’s case, likely has a lot of politics at play. Khalif did beat a Russian in the 2023 World Championships, much like Ewa beating Germans in the 1960’s, whilst it was Wu, of Taiwan, that began the absolute mess that the IBA found it’s self in when Rakhimov, and then Kremlev had to try and tidy things. It was the mess of a Taiwanese official that essentially forced the IOC’s hand back in 2019, to suspend the organisation.

It’s worth noting, that IBA have been amazingly inconsistent in their words regarding the matter, with this becoming an even more confusing mess the more they’ve spoke about it, including their August 5th press conference, which was a farce, as many suggested.

Among the questions that IBA have yet to clarify was what testing was done? They have both said testosterone was and wasn’t done,depending on who was answering, blood and genetics were done, but never explained what genetic or blood tests, Which labs were used? They have said WADA accredited, but WADA don’t actually do gender testing, just drug testing, so it would be good to see them actually name the lab. Unless they are worried that WADA will then strip their accreditation. They have cited confidentiality for not sharing the testing the details, but Kremlev has said they had XY chromosomes, which is sharing confidential medical information, if true, so they don’t care about confidentiality? If their was no independent witness, as they admitted, how is anyone to trust their chain of custody? How do they even trust their chain of custody? Their doctor said the two were man, but their own spokesman stated no one said they were a man to the BBC, so which is it?

They have not explained why the rules were changed mid-tournament or why the fighters weren’t suspended ahead of the 2023 Championships allowing for an investigation, like we’d have with a drug test. The closest they’ve come to is that it was too late to suspend them in 2022, though as we all know we get sports people retroactively banned on drugs tests years later, medals stripped from retired athletes, so that doesn’t hold weight. They have also not explained why they didn’t care about the health and safety of their own athletes at their own tournament, yet care about the safety at the Olympics.

Sticking with questions for the IBA, we need to ask, now given they have defined men and women by the simplicity of Chromosomes, whether they will allow XX Males to fight females? After all their definition of a woman is merely someone with XX Chromosomes. What about an XO female? We know XXY females can get pregnant, albeit cases are rare, but surely the ability to be pregnant is something that we’d agree only a female can do? (That’s not to be confused with to be female you must be able to get pregnant). Likewise are they testing all men, to make sure they have only XY Chromosomes, given there is XYY, XXY, XXXY and XXYY males, whilst people with the the latter two configurations are unlikely to ever be world class athletes due to the developmental issue they cause, XXY and XYY tend to live very normal lives, much like XX Males, and only find out in later life that they rather a rare Chromosome configuration. Notably however, no one is actually sure how rare they are, because people don’t tend to be tested until it becomes an issue, often when they are trying to have children and find that they can’t, later discovering they are infertile, and even then some men with XXY have fathered children. This also doesn’t reference the “Make male” gene, which further complicates science.

IBA tried to make a very complicated thing very simple. The IOC accepts it’s incredibly difficult to actually define what a male and what a woman are. Whilst it’s easy to say that the IOC are passing the buck, the reality is that we don’t really understand gender anywhere close to what we think we do. We’ve seen some suggesting the IBA’s stance is right, though those same people would be fuming if an XX Male fought an XX Female, despite both being classed as female by the IBA’s rules. We’ve seen others suggest that puberty should be the point where definitions should come into play, and whether they went through male puberty, but when athletes are competing as teenagers, and when some have delayed puberty this really doesn’t work either. We do need to find a working solution to define male and female athletes, but that is a very complicated thing to do, and something that needs to be left down to science, to work out what is and isn’t an unfair advantage, whether it goes down to the “Make male gene” rather than the Chromosome results or whether there is several things all needing to line up in a limited way.

Unlike Ewa’s situation, where things were very much more of a pseudoscience, with results that were known to be unreliable and that the IAAF were told not to use, we are now able to test things with excellent detail. We now understand, very widely, that human science, genetics and the make up of the body is incredibly complicated. Yes we are talking about rare cases, though we don’t know how rare, but what this should have done was open up a conversation about how different we all are, how humans aren’t all the same, how we are made up in some very unique ways. This should have opened the conversation on not just DSD, but also helped educate individuals on the differences and how things are a lot more complicated beneath the hood than the simplistic understanding we are taught at school.

It’s a crass analogy, but we are all taught about the states of matter. They are Solid, Liquid, Gas, and if you’re a little more advanced you might also have been taught about Plasma. Though we also have peculiar states that occur in very specific situations, such as Superinsulation, Superfluid, Bose–Einstein condensate and Fermionic condensate.

What we are taught is simple, it’s easy for us to understand and for us to look at, but science isn’t simple, it’s not all pretty with bows, all tied up in a neat little package. Science is developing, and we should have seen this as an opportunity to try and understand just a tiny bit of that science here. Instead so many showed we learned nothing from Ewa. We learned nothing from the stolen career of what should have been a sensational female athlete.

Although Irena Kirszenstein’s name only came up in passing, we think everyone should be aware as to what an incredible athlete she was, and is some everyone should read up. A truly incredible woman.

Sources used:
https://sport.tvp.pl/33996589/nie-jestes-kobieta-kto-skrzywdzil-klobukowska 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/articles/cq5dd2lz8y8o 
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30799415/ 
https://www.edu.tw/News_Content.aspx?n=9E7AC85F1954DDA8&s=DA8AA5D508B75D4E 
https://www.edu.tw/News_Content.aspx?n=9E7AC85F1954DDA8&s=84678630835B71A7 
https://apnews.com/russias-kremlev-defies-olympic-concern-to-win-boxing-vote-052d19fec76728f33b264763c5b98287#:~:text=%E2%80%9CI%20am%20the%20most%20clean,sport's%20Olympic%20status%20was%20retained 
https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1093441/rakhimov-loses-two-counts 
https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1128389/ukraine-suspended-iba#:~:text=Boxing%20Federation%20of%20Ukraine%20suspended%20by%20IBA%20due%20to%20Government%20interference,-Click%20here%20for&text=The%20Boxing%20Federation%20of%20Ukraine,(September%2025)%20Extraordinary%20Congress. 
https://www.espn.co.uk/boxing/story/_/id/34090882/cas-ruling-uncertainty-iba-presidency-put-boxing-olympic-future-doubt 
https://www.iba.sport/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/20240303-IBA-Technical-Competition-Rules-v7-clean.pdf (current IBA rules)
https://www.iba.sport/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/20240303-IBA-Technical-Competition-Rules-v7-clean.pdf (IBA rules as of 3rd March 2023)
https://eubcboxing.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/20230325-IBA-Technical-Competition-Rules-ENG.pdf (IBA rules as of 25th March 2023)