It not the “satanic drag" performance during the opening ceremony, the Seine’s pollution, or the “anti-record” swimming pool at La Défense. The great controversy surrounding the Paris Olympics is 46, the number of seconds it took the Italian boxer Angela Carini to surrender to the Algerian Imane Khelif. Of course, the controversy isn’t the 46 seconds themselves but their context.
Khelif isn’t just any boxer. Along with Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, she is one of two boxers who arrived in Paris under scrutiny for their testosterone levels. The International Boxing Association (IBA) excluded them from its championship last year after determining that they had a “competitive advantage” over other women.
What happened? The round lasted less than a minute and spread like wildfire across social media. In seconds, Khelif delivered two powerful punches to her opponent, Carini, in the ring. The first hit her chin. The second caused such intense pain in her nose that, the Italian would later claim, it made her give up.
“I felt a strong pain in the nose," she said. "I said enough because I didn’t want. I couldn’t finish the fight after the punch to the nose. So, it was better to put an end to it.”
46 seconds. Not a second more. The fight was over in a surprisingly brief time. Still, if one thing was present in the ring, it was tension, as Carini recoiled from Khelif’s handshake and fell to her knees in tears. “It’s not right,” she muttered, visibly angry, before the referee raised her opponent’s arm to declare her the winner. Minutes later, speaking to the BBC, Carini was even more outspoken. Yesterday’s fight, she lamented, “could have been the fight of a lifetime,” but she decided to end it because “I had to preserve my life as well in that moment.”
“I’m here for the gold.” That’s what Khelif said after the fight. In statements to the British outlet, she limited herself to insisting that her goal was to get the gold medal and stressed: “I’ll fight anyone, I’ll fight everyone.” The big fight she’ll face in Paris, however, isn’t the one with Carini or the one that will compare her from with the rest of the boxers from now on. Her big fight will be with the controversy that follows her as an athlete, a controversy related to her physical condition that dates back long before Paris 2024 and that has increased in recent days with statements from Italian officials, including the president of the council of ministers, Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, and the minister of infrastructure and transport, Matteo Salvini.
Meloni claimed that the fight between Khelif and Carini was “unfair” and proclaimed that “athletes with male genetic characteristics should not be allowed to participate in women’s competitions,” according to a Google translation of her statements. Salvini went further and published on his X account, without providing any proof, that the Algerian is a “trans” boxer, so, he argues, the fact that she competes with women is “madness, the result of the hypocrisy of political correctness.”
The origins of the controversy. The controversy surrounding Khelif and Lin predates the Paris Olympics. Neither is a newcomer to the ring. Khelif is 25 and Lin is 28. Both have competed in IBA championships as well as the Tokyo 2020 Games. What’s more, the Algerian reached the quarterfinals in the lightweight (60 kg, or about 130 pounds) division at the Japanese competition. She became the first female boxer from her country to win a medal at the World Championships, taking silver in 2022.
The Taiwanese boxer reached the round of 16 in the featherweight division at Tokyo 2020 and is a three-time medalist at the World Championships, winning gold in 2018 and 2022 and bronze in 2019. Over the past year, however, both Lin and Khelif have been in the spotlight, especially since the start of the Olympic Games in Paris. The reason: The IBA declassified them from the 2023 World Championships in New Delhi. Lin had already won bronze, and the Algerian had been preparing for the final.
Why did the IBA do this? Because of the condition of the two women. However, the association didn’t justify its decision. On the contrary, in March 2023, after disqualifying the female boxers, Russia's IBA president Umar Kremlev said that the body had excluded athletes who had tried to pass themselves off as women from the New Delhi competition.
“According to the results of DNA tests, we have identified some athletes who tried to deceive their colleagues and impersonate women. They were proved to have XY chromosomes, as per the test results. Such athletes were excluded from the competition,” Kremlev told the TASS news agency at the time, without giving further details of what happened or revealing specific names, according to an Google translation of his statement. Lin didn’t appeal, but Khelif did, although she eventually withdrew her objection during the process.
Have there been more details from the IBA? Yes. Following the uproar over Khelif and Lin’s participation in the Paris Olympics, the body issued a statement this week reaffirming its decision in 2023. Its reasoning is that neither the Taiwanese nor the Algerian “met the eligibility criteria” to compete in a women’s event. “This decision, made after a meticulous review, was extremely important and necessary to uphold the level of fairness and utmost integrity of the competition,” the IBA stated.
“Point to note, the athletes did not undergo a testosterone examination but were subject to a separate and recognized test, whereby the specifics remain confidential. This test conclusively indicated that both athletes did not meet the required necessary eligibility criteria and were found to have competitive advantages over other female competitors,” the statement concluded. As the BBC reports, “IBA chief executive Chris Roberts said XY chromosomes were found in both cases.”
A disqualification and then an Olympic opportunity. The fact that Khelif and Lin were disqualified from the World Championships in New Delhi by the IBA but were allowed to compete in Paris may seem contradictory. Still, there’s a simple explanation related to the organization and criteria. The IBA was behind the World Championships. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is behind the French Olympic Games , which “in the interest of the athletes and the boxing community” has decided to keep the IBA excluded from the organization of recent Olympic games, something that is quite clear in the note issued by the IBA.
“We express concern over the inconsistent application of eligibility criteria by other sporting organizations, including those overseeing the Olympic Games. The IOC’s differing regulations on these matters, in which IBA is not involved, raise serious questions about both competitive fairness and athletes’ safety,” the IBA stated.
What her passport says. Things look different from the standpoint of the IOC, which has stuck to its guns and defended that Khelif and Lin meet all the requirements to compete in France. With women, of course. “All athletes participating in the boxing tournament of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 comply with the competition’s eligibility and entry regulations, as well as all applicable medical regulations set by the Paris 2024 Boxing Unit (PBU),” the IOC rebutted in a statement released yesterday.
The IOC concludes with a critical insight: “As with previous Olympic boxing competitions, the gender and age of the athletes are based on their passports.” Without detailing names or specifically citing Khelif and Lin, the IOC clapped back at the IBA, arguing that its decision last year is behind the Paris Games controversy.
Click on the image to go to the tweet.
“An arbitrary decision.” “The current aggression against these two athletes is based entirely on this arbitrary decision, which was taken without any proper procedure–especially considering that these athletes had been competing in top-level competition for many years,” the IOC said. As a conclusion, the international body insists: The rules it applies have already been used in Tokyo 2020 and the eligibility criteria “cannot be changed during the ongoing competition.” Changing them would require “appropriate procedures” and “scientific evidence.”
Controversy and a lot of noise. The exchange of accusations between the IOC and the IBA and what happened to Carini—today, Lin competed in the Nord Paris arena—have fueled a bitter controversy that has reached its boiling point on social media. There are those who, like Salvini, have called Khelif a “trans boxer.” Neither the Algerian boxer nor the Taiwanese boxer have ever identified themselves as transgender, male, or intersex, according to TIME magazine. In their respective Olympic files, they identify as female. IOC spokesman Mark Adams has actively and passively insisted that the two have been competing for “many years” and that “they didn’t arrive all of a sudden.”
Salvini’s comment about Khelif isn’t based on evidence. Adams has said in recent days, at the height of the controversy, that “it’s not a transgender issue.” At least in Khelif’s case, there’s another equally relevant factor that some analysts have already commented on: The athlete is from and represents Algeria, a country with restrictive laws against the LGBTQ community. Moreover, Amnesty International denounces that her government has even promoted “a campaign against all products containing ‘colors and symbols contrary to morality.’”
“Unfounded propaganda.” The Algerian Olympic Committee (COA) has also taken up Khelif’s cause and rejected the controversy by publicly and strongly condemning the “unfounded” attacks on its athlete. According to the COA, these are “defamations,” “unethical” accusations, and “baseless propaganda.”
“Such attacks on her personality and dignity are deeply unfair, especially as she prepares for the pinnacle of her career at the Olympics. The COA has taken all necessary measures to protect our champion,” the COA stated.
The background debate. The Khelif and Lin cases are interesting because they go beyond both athletes. This isn’t the first time that gender, testosterone levels, and intersex have dominated the Olympic debate. According to an article published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, some cases of athletes with XY chromosomes have occurred: “Ewa Klobukowska, a Polish sprinter, became the first woman to be disqualified from sport. She was stripped of her medals and publicly chastised. It is believed that she had XX/XXY mosaicism.” This case dates back to the middle of the last century.
The most famous case, however, is that of Caster Semenya, a South African athlete who has also been questioned over her high testosterone levels and whose case has even reached the European Court of Human Rights. At the opposite end are those, like Australia’s boxing captain Caitlin Parker, who believe it’s inappropriate for athletes like Khelif to compete against women. “Especially in martial arts. It can be incredibly dangerous,” she said recently, echoing Carini’s post-fight comments.
The challenge of intersexuality. What happened in Paris brings back one of the biggest challenges facing the Olympic Games and professional sports in general: how to deal with intersexuality with athletes who have varying degrees of characteristics of both sexes. It isn’t an easy question. And the debate is certainly not about Khelif and Lin. In 2023, the Court of Human Rights said that Semenya may have suffered “sex discrimination” when the IAAF banned her from certain events because of her intersex condition and testosterone levels.
One of the keys is the very complexity of sex. “Biological sex is more complicated than we first thought. The male/female biological binary is not immovable and is refuted by the phenomenon of intersexuality, which combines male and female biological characteristics: chromosomes, gonads, genitals,” the sexologist Loola Pérez stated in an interesting X thread in 2019.
On the Internet, some voices are focusing the debate on testosterone levels. In the background, there’s a need for clear regulations that consider a reality that shakes the foundations of sport from time to time.
This article was written by Carlos Prego and originally published in Spanish on Xataka.
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