![Imane Khelif]()
Imane Khelif is taking home the gold.
Even with all of the negativity encircling the boxer, the Algerian focused in on the tasks at hand and rolled though nine days of competition to claim the top award in the women's welterweight division. This comes just days after Khelif spoke to
SNTV, a sports partner of The Associated Press, and asked those who were criticizing and calling bouts she was involved in "unfair" to stop bullying athletes:
"I send a message to all the people of the world to uphold the Olympic principles and the Olympic Charter, to refrain from bullying all athletes, because this has effects, massive effects.
It can destroy people, it can kill people’s thoughts, spirit and mind. It can divide people. And because of that, I ask them to refrain from bullying."
In case you need to be caught up on the story, there's been a lot of tension around Algerian boxer Imane Khelif competing in this year's Olympic games. One of Khelif’s early matchups, which saw the Algerian box against Italy's Angela Carini,
only lasted 46 seconds. That's because the clearly outmatched Carini flew the white flag after taking multiple hits and being punched in the nose.
The short nature of that fight wasn't what drew in all of the attention. Instead, its the fact that the Algerian boxer’s biological gender has been in question throughout the games. Khelif has been disqualified from competing in previous women’s tournaments (like those sanctioned by the International Boxing Association) because of elevated levels of testosterone, as well as possessing an XY chromosome (males have XY chromosomes, while females have XX chromosomes).
Most recently, she was banned from the 2023 World Championships by IBA, and although she initially appealed that decision, she eventually withdrew her appeal. Despite those findings, it’s important to note that Khelif has never identified as male, transgender or intersex. Throughout Khelif’s many years of competition, the Algerian boxer has always competed as a female, and even did so in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, in which Khelif quietly lost in the quarterfinals.
But in these games, even with all of the controversy swirling around Khelif, the Algerian boxer came away victorious.
China's Yang Liu lost to Khelif in the women's welterweight final earlier today, taking home the gold medal after a unanimous 5-0 decision.
https://twitter.com/Paris2024/status/1822020900688204162
After winning she commented only briefly on the controversy:
"For eight years, this has been my dream, and I'm now the Olympic champion and gold medalist. That also gives my success a special taste because of those attacks. We are in the Olympics to perform as athletes, and I hope that we will not see any similar attacks in future Olympics."
When asked, IOC president Thomas Bach basically said that there isn't a good way to know for sure what any athlete's gender is:
“It is not as easy as some may, in this culture war, may now want to portray it, that the XX or the XY is the clear distinction between the men and women. This is scientifically not true anymore, and therefore these two are women and they have the right to participate in the women’s competition.”
In previous conversations, the IOC has argued that testosterone also isn't a good indicator.
So there's just no way to know? Is that what we're saying?
https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1821929292852351443
