What’s going on?
After two punches and 46 seconds, Italian Angela Carini gave up on Thursday in the eighth final of the Olympic women’s boxing tournament up to 66 kilos. “It’s not fair,” she exclaimed, then refused to take part in the final ritual in which the referee raises the arm of the winning boxer.
The unusually short bout and Carini’s statement drew renewed attention to her opponent, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif. She made headlines last year because she was disqualified just before the final of the World Boxing Championships. Khelif would not meet the criteria to participate in the women’s competition based on a “sex test,” the IBA said.
The association has not been recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for a year due to integrity and financial problems. Khelif is therefore allowed to participate in the Olympic Games, as it did three years ago in Tokyo. It was then eliminated in the quarter-finals.
But since last Thursday’s match, her participation has come under fire. In the boxer’s latest Instagram post, people speculate about her gender: she is said to be trans or intersex. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni followed suit when she told reporters after the match: “I believe that athletes with male genetic characteristics should not be admitted to women’s competitions.”
Khelif’s quarter-final opponent, Hungarian Anna Luca Hamori, also wrote on Facebook yesterday that she considers Khelif’s participation “unfair.”
What is known about Imane Khelif’s gender?
The 25-year-old boxer was born a woman and her passport also indicates that she is a woman. So she is not trans. There is also no indication that she is intersex. Last year she told the French news agency AFP in an interview that she is the victim of a conspiracy theory.
Why was Khelif disqualified from the World Cup?
After Khelif’s disqualification last year, Umar Kremlyov, the president of the IBA, told Russian state media that Khelif has both X and Y chromosomes. There is no further evidence of this: it is unclear what kind of test it was, who performed it and what the results were.
In response to the stir surrounding Khelif’s participation in the Games, the IBA said in a statement statement that it is not a testosterone test, but another “recognized and confidential test.”
It is noteworthy that the test was conducted shortly after Khelif defeated a Russian opponent. The IBA is known for a closed and undemocratic administrative culture and Kremlyov for his warm ties with Putin. Political interference in the decision to disqualify Khelif therefore does not seem unthinkable.
Does the IOC measure whether someone is intersex?
The IOC does not carry out DNA tests to determine the biological sex of athletes. Until 1996, this gender test was part of participation in the Olympic Games. This regularly showed that athletes in the women’s tournaments were intersex. “Often they themselves were not even aware of it,” said sports scientist Wim Derave, affiliated with Ghent University. NOS Radio 1 News.
And that causes problems, says Derave, when people suddenly discover, through an unsolicited test, that they are a different sex than they had always thought. “So I can understand that systematic testing eventually stopped.”
Gender DNA testing is also a poor indicator of whether or not someone can participate in a tournament, because the way intersex DNA is expressed can vary widely from person to person.
For example, in 1985 it turned out that Spanish hurdler María José Martínez-Patiño had both a The reason: Martínez-Patiño has androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS), which means that she is insensitive to the action of male hormones, and therefore has feminine characteristics, despite having XY chromosomes.
Today, athletes undergo a series of different tests to assess whether they can compete in the women’s competition. All participating athletes comply with the medical regulations applicable to the tournament, the IOC wrote in a statement released on Thursday. In it, the IOC also expresses its support for Khelif: “Everyone has the right to practice sport without being discriminated against.”
Carini also apologized on Friday for his in-ring statement. “This whole controversy saddens me,” he told the Italian. The Sport Gazette. ‘I feel sorry for my opponent too. If the IOC lets us know that she can fight, I respect that decision.’ On Saturday, the International Boxing Association announced that despite her unsportsmanlike behaviour, Carini will receive around 47,785 euros in prize money.
