How boxer Imane Khelif overcame a gender row to stand on the brink of Olympic glory

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Imane Khelif has fought her way to within one bout of Olympic gold, separated from glory by just nine minutes of combat in Paris. Yet she has been standing in the eye of a storm, as much as she has been standing in a boxing ring.

Some might have first felt the swirl last week, when Angela Carini withdrew 46 seconds into her fight with the Algerian, tearfully saying she had “never been hit so hard” in her life. But the cumulus stage played out long before that controversial contest, which drew attention to Khelif’s disqualification for allegedly failing a gender eligibility test at the 2023 World Championship. The origin of this particular tempest can be traced back to 2022.

Because, according to the International Boxing Association (IBA), it was in 2022 that Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting first returned adverse test results – two years before both claimed medals in Paris this summer. “Blood tests were taken, a gender test was taken – as it was – during the Women’s World Championship in 2022 in Istanbul,” said the IBA’s General Secretary and CEO, Chris Roberts, at a press conference on Monday (5 August). “The blood tests were taken by a lab in Istanbul. The results that were brought out were inconsistent, further to which there’s been a number of questions as to why.”

Further to which, there were a number of questions as to why the IBA waited until the 2023 World Championship to follow up on this matter, despite the body’s concerns and Lin clinching gold at featherweight.

The IBA did not have many sound answers to those questions, beyond that this is a complicated, sensitive issue. That much, admittedly, is true. And so the 2023 tournament rolled around, and “both boxers were asked to take a further blood test”, as Roberts explained. “The results came through, and it demonstrated the chromosomes that we referred to within the competition rules – that make both boxers ineligible.”

Roberts did not mention XY chromosomes, which relate to male biological development, but told reporters to “read between the lines”. The face of IBA President Umar Kremlev, slightly stretched and pixelated, was beamed down from a big screen behind Roberts. In one of his many extended rants on Monday, the Russian said Khelif and Lin were also found to have “very high” levels of testosterone, despite a prior IBA statement saying neither boxer had been tested for that hormone.

In any case, Khelif, 25, and Lin, 28, were disqualified from the 2023 World Championships. Lin is said not to have appealed; Khelif did, per the IBA, but later withdrew her challenge. It remains unclear why.

Overall, not the clearest communication by the controversial IBA, which is no longer recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and which ceased to organise boxing at the Olympics before the 2021 Games. The IOC, which itself oversaw boxing in Tokyo and has set up the Paris Boxing Unit to do so this month, parted ways with the IBA over concerns relating to the organisation’s finances and links to Russia, and due to fears of corruption.

The IOC has hit out at the IBA’s means of testing (although the specifics of the testing have been withheld) and is using passports to determine an athlete’s sex. For all the criticism of the IBA, perhaps the body has a point in its counter-criticism of the IOC: that using a passport alone is a flawed method here.

And the IBA’s concerns over sporting fairness and fighter safety may even be valid. This is a complicated, sensitive topic, and conversations over fairness and safety are worth having. The issue is: almost no one is having these conversations, because the narratives around Khelif and Lin’s Olympic campaigns have been hijacked, and dragged into the mire of wider culture wars. And among the verbal grenades, lobbed haphazardly over battle lines, are entirely unfounded allegations that Khelif is a transgender athlete.

That is despite Khelif having been, to all knowledge, born and raised as a woman and never having identified as transgender or intersex. The same applies to Lin. And somewhere in here lies the fact, trivial as it may seem, that Khelif and Lin have lost to fellow women a combined 23 times – and that both competed at the Tokyo Games without winning medals.

In any case, the most vicious region of this ever-spinning cyclone has seen Khelif and Lin wrongly accused of being men, fighting women. Among those spreading this sentiment were X owner Elon Musk and Harry Potter author JK Rowling.

And it was always likely that the storm would intensify if either boxer secured a medal, and that a downburst could accompany a gold medal.

Khelif has fought twice since Carini’s withdrawal, which was followed by an apology from the Italian. The 25-year-old has beaten Luca Anna Hamori and Janjaem Suwannapheng via unanimous decision, winning both fights comfortably, her victories accompanied by further complaints from some corners.

Before facing Khelif, Hamori said she was “not scared” of the Algerian and shared a controversial image on Instagram – initially posted by another account – of a horned cartoon monster facing off with a female boxer. Suwannapheng, who was beaten by Khelif at last year’s World Championship prior to the latter’s DQ, seemed unbothered by the controversy.

Khelif was fired up after her win against Suwannapheng, before which she called for an end to the “bullying”. “This has effects, massive effects,” she said in an interview in Arabic. “It can destroy people, it can kill people’s thoughts, spirit and mind. It can divide people.”

Just as Lin has reached Saturday’s featherweight final, Khelif will face China’s Yang Liu in the welterweight final on Friday. The Algerian stands on the edge of Olympic glory, but at the centre of a storm.