Everyone has the right to practice sports: IOC reacts to controversy over Algerian boxer Khalif

Everyone has the right to practice sports: IOC reacts to controversy over Algerian boxer Khalif

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On Thursday, Italian boxer Angela Carini abandoned her 66kg women’s boxing match against Algeria’s Iman Khalif, allowing Khalif, who was banned from competing at the World Championships after failing testosterone and gender eligibility tests, to win in the first round.

Algeria’s Khalif won the bout in just 46 seconds after her opponent quit. Carini landed very few punches before quitting, a rare occurrence in Olympic boxing.

The win was met with negative comments from a number of prominent figures, including J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk, who questioned Khalif’s gender on social media.

“Could any picture better express our new men’s rights movement? The smile of a man who knows he/she is protected by a misogynistic sports establishment, revelling in the misery of a woman whose head he/she has punched, and whose life ambitions he/she has shattered,” JK Rowling wrote on X.

Elon Musk responded to a post by sports celebrity host Riley Gaines, in which he/she said “men have no place in women’s sports #IStandWithAngelaCarini let’s trend this”

Musk replied “absolutely”

Many such comments on social media forced the IOC to support Iman Khalifa. In its response, the IOC said “All athletes participating in the boxing tournament of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games comply with the eligibility and entry rules of the competition, as well as all applicable medical regulations set by the Paris 2024 Boxing Unit (PBU). As in previous Olympic boxing competitions, the gender and age of athletes are based on their passports.”

“These rules also apply during the qualification period, which includes the boxing tournaments at the 2023 European Games, Asian Games, Pan American Games and Pacific Games, the 2023 ad hoc African qualifying tournament in Dakar (SEN), and the two world qualifying tournaments held in Busto Arsizio (ITA) and Bangkok (THA) in 2024, which involved a total of 1,471 different boxers from 172 National Olympic Committees (NOCs), the Boxing Refugee Team and individual neutral athletes and saw over 2,000 qualification bouts,” the IOC statement said.

The IOC said the athletes concerned had previously been the subject of arbitrary decisions by the International Boxing Association.

The IOC said, “We have seen reports containing misleading information about two female athletes participating in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. These two athletes have been participating in international boxing competitions in the women’s category for many years, including the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, the International Boxing Association (IBA) World Championships and IBA-sanctioned tournaments. These two athletes were victims of a sudden and arbitrary decision by the IBA. At the end of the IBA World Championships in 2023, they were suddenly disqualified without any due process.”

“According to the IBA minutes available on its website, this decision was initially taken solely by the IBA Secretary General and CEO. The IBA Board only then confirmed it and only then requested that a procedure to be followed in similar cases in the future be established and reflected in the IBA Regulations. The minutes also state that the IBA should “establish a clear procedure on gender testing. The current aggression against these two athletes is based solely on this arbitrary decision, which was taken without any due process – especially considering that these athletes had been participating in top-level competition for many years. Such an approach is contrary to good governance,” the IOC said.

The IOC said it is committed to protecting the human rights of all athletes participating in the Olympic Games in accordance with the Olympic Charter, the IOC Code of Conduct and the IOC Strategic Framework on Human Rights. The IOC further stated that it was saddened by the mistreatment of the two athletes, the release said.



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