Intersex boxer Imane Khelif will fight again on Wednesday, but it’s the Olympic bosses on the ropes
When Imane Khelif steps into the ring for her boxing semi-final, the IOC’s convoluted reasoning on womanhood will face renewed scrutiny.
When intersex boxer Imane Khelif steps into the ring at Roland Garros on Wednesday, the International Olympic Committee’s convoluted reasoning about womanhood will go too.
Khelif, the Algerian boxer with XY chromosomes, will be fighting Thai opponent Janjaem Suwannapheng for the chance to be in the gold medal bout while the Olympic bosses are on the ropes about their dereliction in protecting women’s sport.
It is not that they hadn’t been warned. The International Boxing Association had sent correspondence to the IOC headquarters in Lausanne a year ago informing them of Khelif’s status. The letter seen by 3 Wire Sports says “DNA testing of disqualified boxer Imane Khelif concluded the DNA was of a male consisting of XY chromosomes”.
A woman, says the IOC boss Thomas Bach, is someone with a passport that says so. That opens up the female category to men who transition, men who self-identify as women and, possibly in this case, men who were born with a chromosomal differences and have internal testes.
Bach says to follow the science, claiming that the contentious boxers aren’t that good, having previously lost fights, and insisting that critics should be quiet about it.
The silence instead has been within the Olympic powerbrokers, with such little concern about the issues raised by the female boxers who speak of injury fears meted out by testosterone- laden blows of Khelif and the second controversial boxer, Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting.
When Khelif’s first opponent Angela Carini had her face smashed in and had to surrender the bout in the first minute last Thursday, the IOC was appalled, but only on behalf of the XY boxers, who have received online harassment.
Bach says the issue is with the media who are reporting on the controversy; spokesman Mark Adams says to “dial it down” and twice has claimed concerns about the XY boxers was “a witch-hunt”.
The IOC doesn’t want to reintroduce sex testing, a simple swab of the cheek that could identify problematic cases for further scrutiny, because it doesn’t want to confine the women’s category solely for genetic XX women.
Bach and his cohort say XY intersex athletes have the human rights to compete in the women’s category.
After the most recent bout, Khelif defiantly said to an Algerian colleague “I am woman”.
Overnight the issue will further intensify when the IBA will heap further scorn on the IOC for allowing two boxers they had previously banned to compete in the Games.
A Paris press conference held by the IBA on Monday is set to rival the media scrum that has swollen at the boxing venue beyond the capacity anticipated by the Paris Olympic organisers.
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