Leaked Medical Report Says Imane Khelif is Male

Last week World Boxing, the organization currently recognized by the Olympics as the governing body for boxing, announced a new policy. Any female boxer whose sex is challenged will have to undergo a PCR test to verify their genetic makeup, i.e. a chromosome test. 

In addition to rolling out this new policy, World Boxing specifically took aim at Algerian boxer Imane Khelif who won gold in the 2024 Olympics in Paris as a female boxer. That win led to intense controversy as Khelif had previously (in 2023) been disqualified from an international competition for reportedly having XY chromosomes based on a test that was widely reported but never revealed.

Over the weekend, a site called 3 Wire Sports published an image of the test which states that Imane Khelif has XY chromosomes.

Now, with Algeria’s Imane Khelif said to be on the verge of returning to competition, World Boxing has announced that Khelif, winner of a gold medal at the Paris Games, must take a chromosome test to prove eligibility – in its words, undergo “mandatory sex testing.” 

Unless someone manipulates the evidence, the result is going to be crystal clear, déjà vu all over again, because in chromosome tests given amid the International Boxing Association’s 2022 and 2023 world championships, the boxer’s DNA showed XY markers with “male” karyotypes. The IOC knew this. And still it permitted Khelif, and Yu Ting Lin of Chinese Taipei, whose tests turned up the same markers, to compete in Paris. Lin also won gold. 

3 Wire Sports remains the only journalistic outlet to have seen these 2022 and 2023 tests…

The 2023 IBA championships were held in New Delhi. The tests were done at a local Dr. Lal PathLabs, a “national reference lab” that is, as well, accredited by CAP, the Northfield, Illinois-based College of American Pathologists, and certified by the ISO, the Swiss-based International Organization for Standardization.

Here’s an image of the test result alongside a video of former IOC president Thomas Bach stating that Khelif is a woman.

Thomas Bach – thanks for the invitation!
Here you go! Proof that Imane Khelif is a man. You’re welcome. pic.twitter.com/qt5DBywkDZ

— Jennifer Sey (@JenniferSey) June 2, 2025

This is where things become slightly complicated, not about the outcome of the test but about how Khelif’s proponents at the IOC and in the media attempted to argue the critics were wrong. 

First, the organization that disqualified Khelif in 2023, the International Boxing Association (IBA), was removed as the governing body for the sport by the International Olympic Committee prior to the 2024 Olympics. That meant that last year the IOC was governing boxing itself. The IOC discounted the claims about Khelif’s test results, even though they apparently had seen them, and repeatedly referred to Khelif as a female boxer.

Second, the argument became very specific at times. Here’s how Snopes was reporting the story last August in an article titled “Olympic Boxer Imane Khelif Is Not a Trans Athlete.”

Anti-trans activists and social media pundits immediately painted this fight as an example of the alleged unfairness and danger of allowing trans women to fight against those assigned female at birth.

The author J.K. Rowling, for example, described the match on X as “a young female boxer” having “everything she’s worked and trained for snatched away because [the International Olympic Committee] allowed a male to get in the ring with her.”

The virulently anti-trans X account Libs of TikTok also weighed in, describing Khelif as “a man … being allowed to compete in women’s Olympic boxing in Paris.”

Former U.S. President Donald Trump chimed in as well, describing Khelif as “a person that transitioned”

The problem with these arguments was Khelif is not trans. Khelif was born, and has lived her entire life, as a female.

If you read that very carefully you might notice that neither J.K. Rowling nor Libs of TikTok said Khelif was a “trans” boxer. That word didn’t appear in the quoted tweets. Trump did say that in this instance and that was a mistake, but elsewhere he said simply that he would keep men out of women’s sports.

In any case, that bit of confusion by Trump (but not Rowling or Libs of TikTok) was enough for Snopes, and more importantly the IOC, to make a big point of saying Khelif was not a “trans” boxer, i.e. Khelif never transitioned. Instead, it seems likely Khelif has a DSD or difference in sexual development, meaning Khelif has male chromosomes and male levels of testosterone but might present as female at birth. 

So, again, it’s not accurate to say Khelif is trans if Khelif never transitioned, but the more salient point is that Khelif (according to the testing) is biologically male. J.K. Rowling made a point of clarifying this today. She never said Khelif was trans, only that he was a man.

I never said and never believed Khelif was trans. I knew* he was a man. The gender activists who created a political climate in which sex testing was seen as ‘bigoted’ are as culpable as the IOC for the travesty that ensued.

*via a highly credible source who saw his test results pic.twitter.com/c9fcPRxwSf

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 2, 2025

She also pointed out that the mandatory test is not at all invasive as some are now claiming. It’s a cheek swab.

It’s a win for women because they won’t be battered to death in the ring by men.
If you had any idea what physical tests women go through routinely in their lives you’d know a cheek swab is no bigger deal than flossing your teeth.
Any more moronic questions, wing them over. https://t.co/Qa40hjn1CQ

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 2, 2025

Riley Gaines also declared victory for having seen through the fog.

To all the people that insisted Imane Khelif was a woman because his passport said so,

You were wrong. We were right.

Sincerely,
People with functioning eyes and a shred of honesty pic.twitter.com/lcCbfR0nVF

— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) June 1, 2025

I’m probably not the only person who sees the similarity here between the Imane Khelif situation and the one surrounding Joe Biden. In both cases you had some reports and visual evidence suggesting someone was not what they were claiming to be (a woman in Khelif’s case and competent in Biden’s). And in both cases the media failed to get the story and largely ran interference for the liars. In Khelif’s case that meant narrowly arguing about whether someone was “trans” as opposed to just being male. In Biden’s case that meant arguing about whether or not Biden videos were “cheap fakes” or just evidence of decline.

Here’s how CNN was covering this last year.

August, 2024. CNN’s Laura Coates and Jemele Hill rail against Elon, Trump, Jake Paul, and anyone else questioning if Algerian boxer Imane Khelif is a woman.

She is a woman! She is someone’s daughter you bigots!

They even go so far as to attack a woman boxer that Khelif beat. pic.twitter.com/tvMbUwxKuQ

— MAZE (@mazemoore) November 4, 2024

This is how you lose people’s trust. Meanwhile, the people who got this right look even more reliable than they already did.

I didn’t. https://t.co/gTfTgrlkzJ

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) November 5, 2024

Will Khelif agree to take the mandatory PCR test or decide not to compete? We should know fairly soon as there are several international boxing competitions coming up this summer.