Sex eligibility rules for female athletes are complex and legally difficult. Here’s how they work

AP Sports Writer

PARIS (AP) — Women’s boxing at the Paris Olympics has highlighted the complexity of drafting and enforcing sex eligibility rules for women’s sports and how athletes like Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan are left vulnerable in the fallout. Eligibility for women’s events has often been a legally difficult process for sports bodies that has risked exposing athletes to humiliation and abuse. In the 1960s, the Olympics used degrading visual tests intended to verify the sex of athletes. The modern era of eligibility rules started in 2009, after South African runner Caster Semenya surged to stardom as an 18-year-old gold medalist at the world championships. She is involved in a legal challenge to track’s rules about testosterone levels.