Algerian boxer Imane Khelif with gender test issue wins first Olympic fight in Paris when opponent Angela Carini of Italy quits
Villepinte (France), August 1
Imane Khelif of Algeria won her opening Olympic boxing bout Thursday when opponent Angela Carini of Italy quit after just 46 seconds.
Kheli was disqualified from the 2023 world championships after failing an unspecified gender eligibility test, and her presence at the Paris Olympics has become a divisive issue.
Carini and Khelif had only a few punch exchanges before Carini abandoned the bout, an extremely unusual occurrence in Olympic boxing. Carini’s headgear became dislodged twice before she quit.
Carini refused to shake Khelif’s hand after the decision was announced, and she cried in the ring before leaving.
Khelif is an accomplished amateur who won a silver medal at the International Boxing Association’s (IBA) 2022 world championships.
The same governing body disqualified her from last year’s championships shortly before her gold-medal match because of what it claimed were elevated levels of testosterone.
The 25-year-old entered the ring at the North Paris Arena to a chorus of cheers, but the crowd was confused by the bout’s sudden end.
Khelif and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan have suddenly received massive scrutiny for their presence in Paris after years of amateur competition.
Lin won IBA World Championships in 2018 and 2022. But, the governing body stripped her of a bronze medal last year because it claimed she failed to meet unspecified eligibility requirements in a biochemical test.
The Algerian Olympic Committee issued a statement Wednesday condemning what it termed “lies” and “unethical targeting and maligning of our esteemed athlete, Imane Khelif, with baseless propaganda from certain foreign media outlets.”
Meanwhile, here’s how netizens reacted to the controversy:
Deplorable. This will not end well for the people in power who allowed this to happen. https://t.co/9vR2ylnoJR
— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) August 1, 2024
A user posted on X: “The Olympics just tried to make a woman fight a man...Angela Carini vs Imane Khalif.....you have all lost your goddamn minds to allow a man to fight a woman”
This is Imane Khalif. She boxes for Algeria in the Olympics. She was born a man, through surgery he is now a she & competing in the Olympics, Khalif said in an interview that she would never fight with a man. This year the French Olympics are shameful since their beginning 👎 pic.twitter.com/6YkITHqQ7j
— Sampson Lewkowicz (@SampsonBoxing) August 1, 2024
Another user wrote: “Wasn’t Imane Khalif born a girl? I have not seen anywhere that she has ever identified as trans or as a man. Even if she is intersex, she was still born female. There is no evidence except for the now disgraced IBA test from over a year ago that has never been subsequently proven”
(Inputs from Tribune News Desk)
