Paris 2024: Gender controversy could be knockout blow for boxing at Olympics

Boxing’s status as an Olympic sport has been hanging by a thread for more than a decade, and the latest gender controversy could be the killer blow to its future at the Games.

Italy's Angela Carini reacts during her boxing match against Algeria's Imane Khelif. Picture: AFP

After 128 years of colour, controversy and bald-faced corruption, will this be the knockout blow for Olympic boxing?

The 46 seconds of mayhem that saw Italian fighter Angela Carini, two time world champion, abandon the bout against controversial Algerian boxer Imane Khelif may yet be the killer blow to boxing’s future as an Olympic sport.

It has been hanging by a withering thread for more than a decade.

International Olympic Committee vice-president John Coates could not have been more categorical in his assessment of boxing’s Olympic future in the lead-up to the Games.

“Boxing really is on notice in Paris and I hope they get their act together,’’ Coates told this masthead.

Angela Carini (left) abandoned her bout against Imane Khelif after just 46 seconds. Picture: Getty Images

Fed up with the International Boxing Associations manipulation of competitions, the IOC took over the running of the boxing tournament at the Games.

They prayed for calm waters. They got a tsunami.

Compared to the draw-rigging, match fixing and bribery scandals uncovered in a special investigation into Olympic boxing, the gender issues do not have the same whiff of sinister forces.

Corrupt judges can be banned. Draw-riggers kicked out. But the gender issue is the seemingly unsolvable Rubix cube moment.

In fact, it has the potential to do far more damage than the other scandals because it is far more public.

The sight of a tearful Carini tossing in her headgear sent shockwaves not simply around the Olympic movement but around the world to be one of the most newsworthy events of the Games.

The sight of Angela Carini tossing in her headgear sent shockwaves around the world. Picture: AFP

Somewhere in the world there are IBA officials sniggering behind their hands because Khelif failed a gender identification test at the world championships last year and was unable to compete. The same fate befell Lin Yu‑ting of Taiwan.

Perhaps they saw this sort of debacle coming. For all their flaws, boxing officials know boxing. Olympic officials deal more with morality and inclusion.

Mike Tyson’s old saying that “everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the face’’ now applies to Olympic officials who preached inclusion which sounded fine in the fuzzy world of Olympic idealism but has a vicious punchline.

Olympic officials would have cringed at Carini saying she had to quit to safeguard her life.

The truth is it was not her life in danger but the very competition she was taking part in.