First Imane Khelif... next, Lin Yu-ting: ANOTHER boxer set to fight at Paris Olympics despite failed gender tests

The gender row engulfing boxing at the Paris Olympics isn't going to settle anytime soon, with another boxer who has failed eligibility tests scheduled to fight on Friday.

Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan, a two-time world champion, will follow Imane Khelif in competing at her second Olympics when she fights Sitora Turdibekova of Uzbekistan in the 57-kilogram category.

Algerian fighter Khelif has sparked a huge global debate after her opponent, Italy's Angela Carini, quit 46 seconds into their fight Thursday after taking two massive hits, saying she had never been struck so hard in her life.

Both Khelif and Lin were judged last year to have failed gender eligibility tests at the world championships. Khelif, 25, has male XY chromosomes but is not transgender. Both fighters are female in their passports. 

Lin is top-seeded in the women's 57-kilogram featherweight class, which gave her a first round-bye ahead of her showdown with Turdibekova.

She won the Asian Games title last year which saw her qualify for Paris. Lin won her first world title in 2018 and was a youth world champion in 2013.

Khelif and Lin are two-time Olympians who both fought in the Tokyo Games.

The IOC repeatedly defended the boxers' right to compete this week. Olympic boxing reached gender parity for the first time this year, with 124 men and 124 women competing in Paris.

'Everyone competing in the women's category is complying with the competition eligibility rules,' IOC spokesman Mark Adams said Tuesday. 'They are women in their passports and it’s stated that this is the case, that they are female.

'These athletes have competed many times before for many years. They haven’t just suddenly arrived.'

The IOC said it made its eligibility decisions on boxers based on the gender-related rules that applied at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. 

Several sports have updated their gender rules over the past three years, including World Aquatics, World Athletics and the International Cycling Union. The track body also last year tightened rules on athletes with differences in sex development.

The IOC is in charge of boxing in Paris because it has revoked the Olympic status of the IBA following years of governance problems, a lack of financial transparency and many perceived instances of corruption in judging and refereeing.

The IBA is controlled by president Umar Kremlev, who is Russian. He brought in Russian state-owned Gazprom as its primary sponsor and moved much of the IBA´s operations to Russia.

It was the IBA who disqualified both Ting and Khelif last year.