Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting has joined Algeria's Imane Khelif as an Olympic boxing medallist following days of online abuse and intense scrutiny about their participation at the Paris Games.
Lin defeated Bulgarian Svetlana Kamenova 5-0 in a women's 57kg quarter-final, ensuring she will win at least a bronze medal.
Lin and Khelif were disqualified from the world championships held last year by the International Boxing Association (IBA) for supposedly failing gender eligibility tests, and their presence in Paris has become a divisive international issue.
Ignoring the social media frenzy, Lin, who will next face Turkey's Esra Yildiz Kahraman at Roland-Garros on Wednesday, said her goal was to become to be a gold medallist.
“I want to thank all the supporters from Taiwan,” she said.
Staneva, a 34-year-old amateur boxing veteran, lost a close fight to Lin in the semi-finals of the 2023 world championships in India.
The victory was changed to a no contest by the IBA, which claimed two-time world champion Lin had failed the unspecified eligibility test.
Khelif was showered with cheers throughout her emotional win over Anna Luca Hamori of Hungary on Saturday night.
Competing in her third Olympics, Lin bowed to the crowd before and after Sunday's bout, looking up at cheering supporters before embracing her coaches and exiting the ring.
Meanwhile, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said the gender conducted by the IBA were illegitimate and lacked credibility.
The IOC said the testing process at the world championships, which only came towards the end of the competition after the boxers had already fought several bouts, was completely arbitrary.
"Those tests are not legitimate tests. The tests themselves, the process of the tests, the ad hoc nature of the tests are not legitimate," IOC spokesperson Mark Adams told a press conference.
"The testing, the method of the testing, the idea of the testing which happened kind of overnight. None of it is legitimate and this does not deserve any response."
The IOC last year stripped the IBA of its status as boxing's governing body over governance and finance issues, taking charge of the Paris Games boxing competition and applying eligibility rules from the 2016 and the 2021 Olympics.
