Join on WhatsApp
Join on Telegram
Rabat – Yesterday’s women’s boxing match yesterday’s match between Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and Italy’s Angela Carini has sparked controversy about the participation of Khelif in the Paris 2024 Olympics, with misinformation and unfounded claims clouding the debate.
Imane Khelif, 25, has a solid track record in women’s boxing. She competed in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and earned a silver medal at the 2022 Women’s World Championships in Istanbul.
Despite her achievements, Khelif’s presence at the Paris 2024 Olympics has been overshadowed by allegations about her gender. The controversy began after Khelif’s quick victory in a welterweight match against Italy’s Angela Carini.
Carini, who withdrew from the match after a punch from Khelif, was seen breaking down in the ring. Carini later told the BBC, “It could have been the match of a lifetime, but I had to preserve my life as well.”
Within minutes of the match, social media users started sharing misinformation, claiming Khelif was “born a man.”
The furore exploded online, to the point where US presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance chimed in to spread the false theories. “I WILL KEEP MEN OUT OF WOMEN’S SPORTS!” Trump posted on right-wing social media platform Truth Social. Vance described the fight as “a grown man pummeling a woman.”
Khelif has participated in women’s boxing for years, and has been defeated by 9 opponents. The last athlete to defeat her, Amy Broadhurst, issued a statement defending Khelif.
A campaign on social media has rallied in support of Algerian athlete Imane Khelif, refuting claims that she is transgender. Her historical background and public boxing career supports that these claims are baseless.
An X user posted: “Imane is a woman. She has hyperandrogenism, a condition characterized by abnormally high androgen levels in her blood, leading to elevated testosterone and the presence of XY chromosomes. This is a natural disorder.”
Another X user posted that “Imane Khelif was born a woman from Algeria, where being gay or transgender is a crime. She was cleared to fight at the Olympics by the International Olympic Committee. The amount of hate and transphobia she’s facing is vile, baseless, and harmful to her life. She’s a woman.”
This controversy has even led some to suggest that the issue may be influenced by racial biases, with Khelif’s Arab identity potentially playing a role in the scrutiny she faces.
Gender Claims and Official Responses
Amid the uproar, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Paris 2024 Boxing Unit (PBU) have reiterated that all athletes must adhere to eligibility and medical regulations, with gender verification based on passport information.
A joint statement from the PBU and the IOC, released yesterday, asserted: “Every person has the right to practice sport without discrimination. All athletes participating in the boxing tournament at the Olympic Games Paris 2024 comply with the competition’s eligibility and entry regulations and all applicable medical regulations.”
The statement also criticized the International Boxing Association (IBA) for its abrupt disqualification of Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting during the 2023 World Championships, which led to the current framing of the two athletes as being transgender.
“Such an approach is contrary to good governance,” the statement read. “Eligibility rules should not be changed during ongoing competition, and any rule change must follow appropriate processes and should be based on scientific evidence,” it added.
Read Also: Japan vs Spain: Olympics 2024 Quarter Final Match Time & Preview
The National newspaper reports that World Boxing president Boris van der Vorst expressed full support for the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) eligibility policies for the Paris Olympics. He urged critics who lack a deep understanding of gender issues to leave such decisions to medical professionals and scientists.
“I have not seen one single test that is proving that [the boxers are] transgender,” Van Der Vorst said in an interview with the Associated Press.
“That’s the reason why it’s not very respectful for the boxers who are competing here … to speak about them in these terms. That’s what I’m trying to stress. When there is proof, yeah, that’s a different situation. But I haven’t seen anything that proves it,” he added.
The controversy has been exacerbated by misinformation. British author J.K. Rowling and others have falsely claimed that Khelif is a transgender woman on X.
Rowling wrote “Someone with DSD (disorder of sex development) cannot help the way they were born but they can choose not to cheat; they can choose not to take medals from women; they can choose not to cause injury.”
This false narrative has been fueled by misleading videos and inaccurate reports. The IOC’s Mark Adams clarified, “Khelif’s passport indicates she’s a woman. We have not seen ‘one single test’ that proves she is transgender.”
The IBA, the boxing organization that barred Khelif and Lin Yu-ting in 2023, has been suspended by the IOC in 2023 over its lack of transparency and claims of being funded by Gazprom.
The IBA’s previous genetic and hormonal tests on Khelif and Lin Yu-ting revealed that their testosterone levels did not meet the IBA’s eligibility criteria, but did not conclusively prove that they were assigned male at birth, while the IOC has reaffirmed that Khelif’s official documents confirm her as a female athlete, and Algeria’s restrictive laws on LGBTIQ+ rights make legal recognition of trans identities extremely unlikely.
