Sex-disputed boxer Imane Khelif takes third place in AP Female Athlete of the Year voting

Sports journalists came up with only two female athletes more deserving of being called the year’s best than the gold-medal boxer whose fame centered around the firestorm at the Paris Olympics over doubts about her sex.

Imane Khelif of Algeria finished third in the voting for the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year, trailing only WNBA superstar Caitlin Clark and triple-gold Olympic gymnast Simone Biles.

Ms. Khelif bulled through to gold in the women’s 66kg division over the summer, winning four fights without losing a round. But the achievements in the ring were overshadowed by controversy about the masculine-looking fighter who had failed a previous sex test, albeit not at the Olympics.

The controversy also came as the issue of transgender women — who are biological men who have undergone male puberty — competing in women’s sports came to a worldwide boil on a number of fronts.

The vote for Ms. Khelif as the third-top female athlete in the world, which was announced Tuesday, reflected the votes of 74 sports journalists from the Associated Press and its members.

Ms. Khelif is not transgender — which is illegal in overwhelmingly Muslim Algeria.

But the fighter had been disqualified from the last boxing world championships, reportedly for testing positive for XY chromosomes and having testosterone levels typical of a man. The Olympics does not itself perform sex testing but relies instead on the various sports’ international governing bodies.

Algerian sports officials defended her by citing the case of Caster Semenya, a two-time Olympic gold medalist who unsuccessfully challenged the 2018 World Athletics restrictions on athletes with a “Difference of Sexual Development” known as 46, XY from elite women’s meets.

Individuals with 46, XY are often born with ambiguous or female genitalia and raised as girls. But they also have internal testes, undergo male puberty and have male-typical hormone levels — and thus the body of a man.

One of the opponents whom Ms. Khelif defeated on the way to the gold at Paris — Angela Carini — said after their 46-second fight that she had never been hit so hard by a woman.

Ms. Khelif was blasted by the vast majority of the fighters, both male and female, who commented on social media on the furor over the summer, saying that she was effectively a man fighting women.