Italian boxer Angela Carini withdrew less than a minute after the start of her 66 kg boxing quarterfinal match against Algerian Imane Khelif, who has been at the center of controversy in Italy since yesterday due to the Olympic Committee’s decision to admit her to women’s competitions, despite having been excluded from the World Boxing Championships last year. Khelif has a masculine appearance and for this reason she had been subjected to medical tests and deemed unfit to compete as a woman.
Since yesterday, several members of the Italian government have been identifying Khelif as a “trans boxer,” even though there is no evidence that this is the case. At the moment, there is not enough public and confirmed evidence to even say whether Khelif simply has high testosterone levels or whether he falls within the intersexual spectrum, the condition of someone who has both male and female biological characteristics from birth. The latter, however, is the hypothesis that everyone is taking as correct.
After the meeting, among others, the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni criticized what happened, saying that “it was not a fair competition”, but also many conservative commentators from other countries, who argued about the appropriateness of admitting Khelif to the Olympics, linking this kind of decision to the so-called “woke ideology”.
Khelif actually met the criteria for admission to women’s competition at the Olympics, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) reiterated Thursday night, which have been the same since Tokyo 2021 and throughout the qualifying phases for Paris 2024. The IOC called last year’s decision by the IBA, the international boxing federation, a controversial organization that has not been recognized by the IOC for several years, “arbitrary” and “taken without proper procedure.”
Carini announced her retirement after receiving a right from Khelif to the face. She then spoke to her coach, and participated in the moment in which Khelif was proclaimed the winner, without greeting her or looking her in the face. In an interview after the match she said: «I have always gone beyond the controversy, for me when I climb over those ropes whoever is in front of you makes no difference. I stopped because I felt a strong pain in my nose. I felt the second blow on my nose very strong and I understood that either I stopped myself or I could have really hurt myself. And I understood that maybe it was better to be intelligent and mature».
Carini is 25, from Naples and is participating in the Olympics for the second time. Khelif is a year younger, and had already participated in the Tokyo Olympics, when she was eliminated in the quarterfinals without any discussion about her participation. In her career she has been beaten several times by other boxers, including in the final of the 2022 World Championships, when she was defeated by Irishwoman Amy Broadhurst. Broadhurst herself commented on the controversy at the Olympics by saying: «I personally don’t think Khelif did anything to cheat. I think she was born this way, and it’s out of her control. The fact that she’s been beaten by nine women so far says it all».
The controversy over Khelif has centered on her exclusion from the 2023 World Boxing Championships, which is opaque. According to IOC documents provided to reporters, it was due to high testosterone levels. On Wednesday, the IBA (International Boxing Federation) said she had not been tested for testosterone, but did not specify what other testosterone levels were involved, for privacy reasons.
The IOC defended its decision to admit Khelif to the women’s competition on Thursday night, harshly criticizing the ongoing “aggression” against Khelif (and another boxer who had also been barred by the IBA) and the way she was suddenly excluded shortly before the end of the World Championships, where the Algerian boxer had reached the final.
He had not been able to compete because of a decision that, according to the IOC, was initially taken by the CEO and the Secretary General of the IBA alone, and only later ratified by the Board of Directors, who nevertheless asked for the protocol to be followed in similar cases to be made clearer in the future. The IBA’s behavior was “terrible governance“, the IOC said: “eligibility criteria should not be changed during competitions, and their modifications should follow appropriate procedures and be based on scientific evidence.”
“The International Olympic Committee is saddened by the mistreatment these two athletes are suffering,” the statement said, warning that national boxing federations will have to agree on a new international federation for boxing to be admitted as an Olympic sport at Los Angeles 2028.
What prompted many to identify Khelif as a trans athlete was a statement made at the time by Umar Kremlev, president of the IBA, that “based on the results of DNA tests, we have identified a number of athletes who tried to deceive their colleagues and pretended to be women. Based on the test results, it was proven that they had XY chromosomes. Such athletes were excluded from the competition.”
This statement, in addition to never having been documented, would not imply that Khelif is a trans woman, given that there are conditions on the intersex spectrum for which she could have those sex chromosomes despite having predominantly female physical characteristics from birth. Added to this is the fact that in Algeria even having homosexual relations is a crime, so it seems unlikely that Khelif was able to make a gender transition, change her documents and then be selected as an Olympic athlete to represent the nation.
The reason why the IOC and IBA have different rules on the admission of athletes is that the IBA is no longer recognized by the IOC, since it was involved in a series of serious corruption scandals. Since then, the IBA has been based in Russia – Kremlev is a businessman very close to Vladimir Putin – and is mainly financed by Gazprom, the Russian state oil company.
Intersex people (or “intersex,” as many of them prefer to say) are born with atypical characteristics in those aspects of the human body that are related to sex. In addition to the external and internal genitalia (such as the ovaries and uterus), these atypicalities can concern the sex chromosomes (usually XX in females, XY in males), other parts of the DNA and hormones, as well as the physical characteristics they influence. Khelif, however, has never said he is intersex, and the assumption that he is, very widespread these days, is essentially based on Kremlev’s statement alone.
– Read also: The Italian controversy over Algerian boxer Imane Khelif
The criterion that has become more established in recent years to establish whether an athlete can compete in the female categories or not is the one based on testosterone levels, the hormone present in greater quantities in men and which marks the main difference between the two sexes at a hormonal level. Both a trans woman and a woman with a certain condition on the intersexual spectrum could have testosterone levels higher than the female average and therefore also greater physical strength. The priority of testosterone in the evaluation of the eligibility of female athletes in recent years has however gradually been questioned, also because there is currently no unanimous position of the scientific community regarding the correlation between its levels and sports results.
The episode has caused scandal and protests in conservative circles. “Angela’s inconsolable crying affects us but her withdrawal does her credit. I’ll be waiting in the Senate to hug her,” said Senate President Ignazio La Russa after the meeting. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is visiting the Paris Olympics on Thursday, said that “it was not a fair competition.” Family Minister Eugenia Roccella expressed solidarity with Carini, “victim of an ideology that hits her and all women with her.”
Also commenting on the incident was the writer JK Rowling, known for denying trans identity and opposing the inclusion of trans women in feminist battles, according to whom «the Paris Olympics will forever be stained by the brutal injustice on Carini». Among others, Elon Musk, owner of X (Twitter) and Tesla, also criticized the incident.
2024-08-01 11:32:20
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