Imane Khelif defeats Yang Liu for Olympic welterweight gold medal

Algerian boxer Imane Khelif — at the center of a controversy of people wrongly alleging she is a man or transgender — will take home the gold medal after winning her championship bout in the women’s welterweight boxing tournament at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Khelif faced China’s Yang Liu in the gold medal bout.

In a fight where both fighters managed to match each other for size and reach and physicality, Khelif managed to outfox Liu and land enough blows on the Chinese boxer who preferred to try and dance around the ring.

Liu entered the Olympics as the reigning world champion, winning the tournament that Khelif had been disqualified from the year prior — and sat the root of the controversy.

Outrage was first sparked when Khelif’s first opponent, Italian boxer Angela Carini, withdrew and forfeited her match against Khelif after 46 seconds. Carini’s emotional postgame remarks were then used as ammunition for posters on social media and writers to decry that the Italian was forced to face, what many of the critics said, without any factual proof, was a man. Khelif is not transgender, and has identified as a woman since birth. Her passport — the document used to determine her eligibility — reflects as much.

The IOC issued a statement confirming the Algerian is eligible to compete and Carini even apologized to Khelif for how her emotional post-match remarks were weaponized.

That didn’t stop the outrage, though, as another of Khelif’s opponents — Hungary’s Anna Luca Hamori — shared a number of vitriol-filled Instagram stories and a TikTok. Khelif defeated Hamori in their match on scoring.

Along with reposting an Instagram story seemingly depicting Khelif as some sort of muscular, horned animal in the ring, Hamori reposted other stories that continued to — wrongly — claim that Khelif is not a woman and used a Hungarian slur that closely translates to “half breed” and is used most commonly to describe dogs or other animals in a negative connotation. One of the posts that Hamori shared also referred to Khelif as a “monster.”

But now, though, Khelif gets to walk away an Olympic champion.

IOC issued statement in support of Khelif’s participation

The IOC addressed the concerns in a lengthy statement on Thursday.

“Every person has the right to practise sport without discrimination,” the statement began. “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) … . As with previous Olympic boxing competitions, the gender and age of the athletes are based on their passport.”

The IOC statement also addressed Khelif’s disqualification at the 2023 championships and why that doesn’t preclude her from competing in the 2024 Paris Olympics.

We have seen in reports misleading information about two female athletes competing at the Olympic Games Paris 2024. The two athletes have been competing in international boxing competitions for many years in the women’s category, including the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, International Boxing Association (IBA) World Championships and IBA-sanctioned tournaments.

These two athletes were the victims of a sudden and arbitrary decision by the IBA. Towards the end of the IBA World Championships in 2023, they were suddenly disqualified without any due process.

According to the IBA minutes available on their website, this decision was initially taken solely by the IBA Secretary General and CEO. The IBA Board only ratified it afterwards and only subsequently requested that a procedure to follow in similar cases in the future be established and reflected in the IBA Regulations. The minutes also say that the IBA should “establish a clear procedure on gender testing”.

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.

Such an approach is contrary to good governance.

Eligibility rules should not be changed during ongoing competition, and any rule change must follow appropriate processes and should be based on scientific evidence.IOC statement on boxing qualificationsIOC statement on Imane Khelif’s participation in 2024 Paris Olympics

And the IOC closed the message with a plea to adopt a more uniform standard across boxing federations ahead of the next summer Olympics, set for Los Angeles in 2028.