The quarterfinal bout on August 4 between Lin and Bulgarian boxer Svetlana Kamenova Staneva was a tense encounter. At one time, Staneva locked her arm around Lin’s neck, pushing her to the floor. But Lin nimbly fought off multiple subsequent attacks, narrowly winning the first two rounds with 3:2 points, and the third round with a clearcut 5:0 to advance to the semifinal.

When the referee held up Lin’s left hand, declaring her the winner, Staneva seemed to want to storm right out of the ring, barely containing her anger.

But victory is victory. After leaving the ring, Lin could no longer hold back her tears. The pressure she felt was not due to high expectations from her fans in Taiwan but from being at the center of international attention in an escalating gender controversy.

In her first fight in the round of sixteen, Lin had defeated her opponent from Uzbekistan, winning all three rounds. Yet when she kept winning subsequent bouts, the media were not interested in her tactics or technique but whether or not she was a woman. The gender controversy was fueled when Irish boxer Barry McGuigan and British author J.K. Rowling posted comments saying that Lin and Iranian boxer Imane Khelif should not be allowed to compete against women.

For Lin, such criticism is utter irony since her boxing career took off after she developed the ambition to fight better than her male colleagues.

Why Would a Petite Girl Join the Boxing Club?

Lin was born in 1995, the fourth and youngest child in a dysfunctional family. Since her parents did not get along, she was raised by her mother and grandmother.

Faced with domestic violence, Lin sought to become physically strong. But back then Lin stood just 140 cm tall and was very thin, making her an outlier in the predominantly male boxing community. When watching this “little girl”, Lin’s coach Tseng Tzu-chiang did not expect her to stay with the sport for long.

Tseng is known to be a tough coach. He expects his charges to hone their moves to perfection. Once he yelled at Lin when she failed to properly defend herself, throwing her out of the training session. He did not expect to see her again. But when he left the training hall, Lin was waiting outside, begging him to give her another chance.

Lin eventually realized that the physical capabilities of men and women differed. “The moves, speed and strength are completely different.” She had to make an extra effort to master what men do easily.

But she also understood that this weakness could not serve as an excuse to give up. “(Coach) gave me the idea that if you train seeing yourself as a girl you will never make progress,” says Lin.

She decided to put in even more effort, training every day with the men in order to be able to catch up to them.

In her second year in junior high school, Lin won second place in a national contest, after training for just over two months.

She realized that she probably had a real boxing talent, which strengthened her resolve to take this path. After entering senior high school, Lin began to train on weekday afternoons and evenings. When the competition season was around the corner, she would return to school to train even on weekends.

In 2013, the then-18-year-old Lin won gold in the Youth World Boxing Championships in Bulgaria. She immediately gave the NT$40,000 in prize money to her mother.

A Long Dry Spell for the Gifted Boxing Queen

After this first success, Lin went through a long string of disappointments. In 2014 she lost her first fight at the Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea. And at the Olympic Summer Games in Rio, Brazil, in 2016 she lost in the qualifying round.

“I was always thinking of giving up,” confesses Lin, recalling this challenging period.

Tseng then suggested that Lin go to Beijing Sport University on an exchange program to set her mind at rest and adopt a new outlook. 

The stint in Beijing brought about a turnaround. There she met the coach of American heavyweight champion Mike Tyson who helped her improve her moves. In 2017, she won gold at the Women’s World Boxing Championships and another bronze at the Asian Games in Jakarta the following year.

No Avenue for Appealing Abnormal Gender Eligibility Test Results

After Lin won the bronze at the Women’s World Championships in 2023, the International Boxing Association (IBA) stripped her of her medal, stating she had failed a gender eligibility test.

Tseng says for him and Lin the decision came out of the blue. “Does this mean I cannot compete anymore?” asked an incredulous Lin in reaction as she broke into tears.

At the time, Tseng told himself to calmly deal with the decision, but he found that it could not be appealed at the event, and that retesting was not possible. He told Lin to compose herself and suggested that they would take up the matter again after returning to Taiwan.

In the ensuing competitions that year, Lin never failed a gender test again, eventually clinching the gold medal at the Asian Games.

Unfair Treatment Becomes Motivating Force

Lin felt the only way to prove herself was by winning. She is the kind of person who becomes stronger in the face of adversity. “In the end, if you are strong enough when hitting your opponent, it won’t happen (that you are declared the loser). Therefore, these injustices only motivated me to train even harder,” says Lin.

Yet after Lin won all rounds against her opponent from Uzbekistan in the pre-quarterfinals at the Paris Olympics, the gender controversy erupted again. Tseng had expected that the accusations would resurface at the Olympics, but even he was not prepared for the scope that the raging debate would take.

He told Lin to face it squarely. “I told Yu-ting, it’s because they are afraid of you.”

Tseng wanted Lin not only to demonstrate her superior boxing skills but also show through her behavior that she was a top athlete. He told her to respond to derogatory or ridiculing remarks from the spectators with a confident smile.

When taking up boxing in her youth, Lin accepted being trained as hard as male athletes, only to face accusations that she is not a woman as an adult. Has she ever asked herself whether her boxing career would have been smoother if she had been male in the first place?

Lin promptly answers with a clear “No”. The Olympic gold medalist confidently adds “Whatever identity heaven gives you, you need to fulfill that role well.”

Have you read?

• Yuan Yung-Cheng: Taiwan’s First Soccer Pro in Europe
• How Golf Champion Yani Tseng Faced Her Inner Demons

Translated by Susanne Ganz
Edited by TC Lin
Uploaded by Ian Huang