Who is Lin Yu-Ting’s opponent Sitora Turdibekova?
SITORA Turdibekova is a featherweight boxer who is competing at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Her next opponent at the Games is Taiwanese star Lin Yu-Ting — who failed a gender eligibility test in 2023.
APUzbekistan’s Sitora Turdibekova (right) fighting the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Marcelat Sakobi on July 30, 2024[/caption]
Who is Sitora Turdibekova?
Sitora Turdibekova was born in Samarkand, Uzbekistan on May 20, 2002.
She has enjoyed great success in her career, taking home a gold medal at the 2021 Asian Championships and a bronze at the 2021 World Youth Championships.
Her boxing hero is the greatest pugilist of all time, Muhammad Ali.
Sitora is scheduled to fight Lin Yu-Ting at 2.30pm on Friday, August 2 at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Who is Lin Yu-Ting?
Lin Yu-Ting was born on December 13, 1995, in New Taipei City.
She’s a is a Taiwanese boxer competing at the Paris 2024 Games.
Lin developed a love for sports early on, joining an athletics team as a child.
She grew up in a family of four children, achieving good results in athletics and winning awards, which helped her family financially
But she to switched to boxing in an effort to achieve her athletic ambitions, and also develop the skills to protect her mother.
Lin looks up to Ukrainian two-time Olympic champion Vasiliy Lomachenko, who is also a two-time world amateur champion, European amateur champion, and junior world champion.
She has achieved notable success in the ring, winning a gold medal at the 2018 AIBA Women’s World Boxing Championships as a bantamweight.
Lin followed up with more silverware at the 2019 AIBA Women’s World Boxing Championships.
But in March 2023, Lin faced a major setback when she failed a gender eligibility test.
People not born as biological woman, that have been through male puberty should not be able to complete in women’s sport
Nicola Adams
She was stripped of her bronze medal from the International Boxing Association Women’s World Boxing Championships, which was subsequently awarded to Bulgarian boxer Svetlana Staneva.
Despite the controversy in 2023, Lin’s eligibility for the 2024 Paris Olympics was confirmed on July 29, 2024.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that Lin complied with all rules required to compete in the 2024 Olympics.
What has been said about Sitora Turdibekova’s fight against Lin Yu-Ting?
On August 2, former Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen posted a message of support for Lin on Facebook: “Let’s cheer for Lin Yu-ting together”.
The secretary general for Taiwan’s presidential office, Pan Men-an, also took to Facebook to say Lin was “fearless in the face of challenges, whether they come from inside or outside the ring.”
Team GB two-time Olympic champion Nicola Adams, 41, has spoken out about the issue on social media following Angela Carini walking out of her fight against Imane Khalif.
Sitora Turdibekova’s next fight at Paris 2024 is against Lin Yu-Ting
She wrote: “After years of fighting for women’s boxing to even exist in the Olympics and then all the training they go through to get there it was hard to watch another fighter be forced give up on her Olympic dreams.
“People not born as biological woman, that have been through male puberty should not be able to complete in women’s sport.
“Not only is this unfair it’s dangerous!!”
J.K. Rowling took to X to voice her opinion, saying the Paris Olympics had been “forever tarnished by the brutal injustice done to Carini.”
While the International Olympic Committee released a statement reading: “The current aggression against these two athletes is based entirely on this arbitrary decision, which was taken without any proper procedure, especially considering that these athletes had been competing in top-level competition for many years.
“The IOC is saddened by the abuse that the two athletes are currently receiving.
“Every person has the right to practice sport without discrimination.”
But the International Boxing Association came out to condemn “inconsistencies in eligibility” for the Games.
It read: “Both Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting post testing, did not meet the required eligibility criteria to compete within the female category of our respective events.”
Olympics gender controversy
By Mark Fleming
THE International Olympic Committee (IOC) stirred up a huge controversy by clearing two women to box who had previously failed a gender test.
Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting were disqualified at the Women’s World Championships in New Delhi, India, in March 2023.
Lin Yu-ting was stripped of a bronze medal after failing a gender eligibility test.
Khelif was disqualified in New Delhi for failing a testosterone level test.
Officials found tests showed they had ‘XY chromosomes’ — which indicates a person is biologically male.
Rare ‘intersex’ medical conditions, medically known as differences in sexual development (DSDs), can also mean outwardly female individuals can have ‘male’ chromosomes, or vice versa.
The Russia-led International Boxing Association organised that event but is no longer recognised by the IOC.
IOC spokesman Mark Adams said: “These athletes have competed many times before for many years, they haven’t just suddenly arrived – they competed in Tokyo.
“The federation needs to make the rules to make sure that there is fairness but at the same time there is the ability for everyone to take part that wants to. That is a difficult balance.
“In the end the experts for each sport are the people who work in that. If there is a big advantage that clearly is not acceptable, but that needs to be a decision made at that level.”
Both Khelif and Lin competed at the delayed Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021. Lin is a two-time winner at the Asian Women Amateur Boxing Championships.
The IOC said all boxers in Paris “comply with the competition’s eligibility and entry regulations”.
The controversy follows the famous case of Caster Semenya.
South African middle-distance runner Semenya has a condition which means her body naturally produces higher levels of testosterone than normal for women.
She won gold in the 800m at London 2012 and Rio in 2016 but was unable to compete at Tokyo in 2021 after World Athletics brought in new rules independently of the IOC at the time.
