Lin Yu-ting joins fellow boxer Imane Khelif in winning Olympic gold by defeating Julia Szeremeta in the women’s featherweight final

Lin Yu-Ting, a boxer who challenges the sexes, was the best and fought her way to an Olympic gold medal, becoming the second woman to wrong-foot her critics.

The 28-year-old Yu-Ting defeated the 20-year-old Polish Julia Szeremeta in three rounds at Roland Garros, winning via unanimous decision. Together with the Algerian Imane Khelif, he successfully defeated their opponents from outside the ring, who claimed that the pair were men and therefore should have been excluded from the competition in Paris.

Yu-Ting wiped the smile off her opponent’s face with a devastating series of punches from the bell. Szeremeta, who turns 21 in two weeks and is nicknamed “Shady,” tried to disrupt her focus by grinning at her and dancing around the ring.

But Yu-Ting has resisted many attacks in these games and did not accept it anymore. She won in three rounds and fell to her knees when her opponent congratulated her kindly.

While Yu-Ting’s two previous opponents made the ‘X’ sign with their index fingers, Szeremeta chose to make a heart shape towards the audience from the ring. Yu-Ting repeatedly bowed to the spectators and thanked them, pointing to her heart.

Lin Yu-Ting is Olympic champion after winning gold in women’s featherweight in Paris

Taiwanese Lin defeated 20-year-old Polish fighter Julia Szeremeta in the final at Roland Garros on Friday

Lin raised her hand after winning all three rounds and defeating Szeremeta by unanimous decision

However, Yu-Ting’s fight will go ahead after she leaves Paris on Saturday, where she and 25-year-old Khelif were at the centre of the biggest controversy of Paris 2024.

Taiwan’s sports authorities are preparing legal action against the International Boxing Federation over allegations about her gender and her disclosure of her medical records.

Talks with the International Olympic Committee will continue after Paris in a bid to silence the IBA, which plunged Golden Girls Yu-Ting and Khelif into a two-week battle.

Yu-Ting and Khelif were disqualified from last year’s World Boxing Championships in India by the IBA after allegedly failing a gender test.

Taiwanese officials are particularly outraged as they say they conducted their own tests on their boxer in the run-up to Paris, which showed she falls into the women’s 57kg class.

Yu-Ting was attacked in the ring by two of her previous opponents after she defeated them.

Turkey’s Esra Yildiz made the double ‘X’ sign with her index fingers, just as the Taiwanese boxer’s Bulgarian opponent had done in the previous match.

The postchromosomes are designated with an X and a Y, with females having two X’s.

But Yu-Ting and Khelif’s progress to gold medals delivered a major setback to their critics.

The Olympic leaders will also feel that they were proven right in their decision not to ban her and Khelif.

On Friday, Khelif won her gold, which benefited her enormously in the boxing arena and on television in her country.

Lin celebrates her victory in the final of the women’s 57kg boxing event in Paris 2024

Imane Khelif won a gold medal for Algeria in the women’s welterweight on Friday night

Khelif (left) defeated China’s Liu Yang by unanimous decision in the welterweight final on Friday

Yu-Ting also braved the storm that followed her into the ring, bowing and saluting to the 13,000 spectators at Roland Garros, thanking them for their support.

Yu-Ting, who is 1.75 meters tall, was registered as a girl at birth, as was Khelif. Both are listed as female on their passports.

Olympic leaders have defended the participation in Paris 2024 of both Khelif and Yu-Ting, who started boxing at the age of 13.

Yu-Ting’s Olympic officials called the allegations discriminatory and described them as a deliberate attempt to undermine the boxer’s mental state.

The IOC said it based its decisions on boxing participation on the gender rules that were in place at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

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

The IOC is responsible for boxing in Paris, having revoked the International Boxing Federation’s Olympic status, following years of governance problems, a lack of financial transparency and many alleged cases of corruption among judges and referees.

Lin, 28, is pictured waving to the crowd before entering the ring for her gold medal fight

The IBA is headed by President Umar Kremlev, who is Russian. He brought in Russian state-owned Gazprom as his primary sponsor and moved much of the IBA’s operations to Russia.

However, Olympic officials say the case surrounding the two boxers is a “minefield” and that no forensic and irrefutable scientific evidence has been presented to prove that either athlete was not a woman.

IOC President Bach said: ‘We are talking about women’s boxing. We have two boxers who were born as women, who were raised as women, who have a passport as women, who have fought as women for many years. This is the clear definition of a woman.’

But the IBA’s genetic testing showed that Khelif and Yu-Ting have male XY chromosomes in their DNA, but neither of them are transgender.

Celebrities including JK Rowling, British Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies and two-time Olympic gold medallist former boxer Nicola Adams have spoken out against their involvement in women’s sport. Former Prime Minister Lynn Truss is also a critic.