The International Olympics Committee (IOC) has come under fire this week for defending their decision to permit two athletes accused of being male to compete in a contact sport with women. One of the controversial athletes, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, drew widespread criticism on social media immediately following a widely-publicized match against Italian Angela Carini, which she abandoned after only 46 seconds.
After being struck in the head by Khelif, Carini walked to the side of the ring, where she said, “Non e giusto,” or “it isn’t fair.”
Gently touching her nose, which appeared to be in pain, she removed her helmet and forfeited the match before falling to her knees and weeping. The shocking scene quickly went viral online, with critics condemning Khelif’s participation in the female category.
Carini said that she walked away from the match because she had feared for her life, but has since apologized to Khelif. But her concerns about her safety during the match were not the first time a female boxer has remarked on Khelif’s overwhelming strength.
In 2022 after a fight against Khelif, Mexican boxer Brianda Tamara Cruz expressed that she had been grateful to have survived the match against the Algerian.
“When I fought with her I felt very out of my reach, her blows hurt me a lot, I don’t think I had ever felt like that in my 13 years as a boxer, nor in my sparring with men. Thank God that day I got out of the ring safely,” Tamara Cruz said on X shortly after Khelif was disqualified from the 2023 Women’s World Boxing Championships.
Leading up to the bout, multiple news outlets reported on aspects of Khelif’s boxing history, which included two failed “gender eligibility” tests.
Independent outlet Reduxx ignited the conversation in the days leading up to the first round of women’s boxing at the Paris Olympics while noting that Khelif had been removed from the 2023 Women’s World Boxing Championships in New Delhi.
At the time, Umar Kremlev, president of the International Boxing Association (IBA), declared Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting ineligible to compete against women citing “fairness among athletes and professionalism.” According to the IBA, after “a series of DNA-tests,” Khelif and Yu-Ting were discovered as “athletes who were trying to fool their colleagues and pretend to be women.”
Speaking to TASS News, Kremlev claimed that the tests had proven the athletes in question “had XY chromosomes and were thus excluded from the sports events.”
This week, in response to massive outcry over Khelif’s participation in women’s boxing at the Paris Olympics, the IBA issued two statements reaffirming their prior decision to deny eligibility to Khelif, which was based on “two trustworthy tests” that were conducted in 2022 and 2023.
“The IBA will never support any boxing bouts between the genders, as the organization puts the safety and well-being of our athletes first,” read the first statement, published July 31, just hours Khelif’s match against Carini.
“We absolutely do not understand why any organisation would put a boxer at risk with what could bring a potential serious injury within the ‘Field of Play’ (FOP)… We are protecting our women and their rights to compete in the ring against equal rivals, and we will defend and support them in all instances; their hopes and dreams must never be taken away by organisations unwilling to do the right thing under difficult circumstances.”
A follow-up statement issued by the IBA the following day slammed “both the International Olympic Committee and World Boxing for allowing ineligible athletes to compete”.
“IBA remains committed [to] ensuring competitive fairness in all of our events, we absolutely condemn the inconsistencies in eligibility to compete in the boxing competition held in the Paris Olympic Games 2024. To reiterate, both Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting post testing, did not meet the required eligibility criteria to compete within the female category of our respective events.”
The IOC, which last year voted to strip the IBA of its governing status, replacing the organization with the newly-formed World Boxing, hit back at the IBA today with a statement of their own.
“Every person has the right to practise sport without discrimination,” the statement begins. “We have seen in reports misleading information about two female athletes competing at the Olympic Games Paris 2024… These two athletes were the victims of a sudden and arbitrary decision by the IBA. Towards the end of the IBA World Championships in 2023, they were suddenly disqualified without any due process.”
The IOC further condemned the “current aggression against these two athletes,” which it blames on the IBA for its “arbitrary decision” to disqualify Khelif and Yu-Ting from competing against women. The IOC also emphasizes that the IBA had discussed establishing “ a clear procedure on gender testing.”
When calling attention to the IBA decision regarding Khelif and Yu-Ting last year, the Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS), which campaigns to preserve the female category of sports, emphasized that the IOC had dropped sex-verification testing based on a cheek swab.
Shortly thereafter, in 2004, the IOC began permitting males who had undergone genital surgery to compete against female athletes. By 2021, the IOC allowed decisions regarding the sex eligibility of athletes to be made by national governing bodies.
The issue of male athletes with DSDs competing against women has sparked a global discussion on social media, with the topic “trending” on X.
The controversy has been boosted by contributions from several high-profile figures, including JK Rowling, who called the Khelif and Carini debacle a representation of the “new men’s rights movement,”and expressed her support for the Italian female boxer.
Today, Lin Yu-Ting won in all three rounds against Uzbekistan’s Sitora Turdibekova, leading to similar outrage.
