International Olympics Committee Decries “Witch Hunt” As Boxing Gender Row Continues: “This Is A Minefield”

Fierce debate around the eligibility rules for the women’s boxing competitions at the Olympics continued to dominate media coverage on Friday.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is under fire after Italy’s Angela Carini abandoned her boxing match against Algeria’s Imane Khelif Thursday 46 seconds after it started, citing fears for her life.

Khelif’s career, who was born female and has always identified as a woman, has been mired in controversy after she was disqualified by the International Boxing Association (IBA) from the Women’s World Championships in New Delhi in 2023.

The body, which is boycotting the 2024 Olympics over a failure to agree on gender tests, said Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting had failed to meet the eligibility criteria for participating in the women’s competition. It has not released details on the exact markers that sparked this decision.

A raft of high-profile names including JK Rowling and Elon Musk have expressed outrage on social media, suggesting Khelif is male, even though this charge has repeatedly been dismissed as false information.

On Thursday, influencer Logan Paul issued a statement saying he “might be guilty of spreading misinformation” after saying in a now-deleted post on X that what had happened in the boxing ring was the “purest form of evil”.

The IOC continued to stand by Khelif at its daily press briefing on Friday morning dominated by questions about the boxing gender row.

IOC chief spokesperson Mark Adams kicked off the briefing by reading out a strongly worded statement first released on Thursday evening laying the body’s rules for eligibility and voicing concern around “misleading information” that had been released regarding two athletes in the 2024 games.

IOC statement

There have been suggestions that Khelif and Lin were born a Disorder of sex development (DSD, which means they have high levels of testosterone, and potentially with XY male chromosomes. Neither athlete commented on these reports.

Quizzed by one journalist on the IOC response to female athletes who want to go into the ring with full knowledge of the chromosomal make up of their opponents, Adams said the issue was “a mine field”.

He suggested that a universal sex test – which met with approval from all athletic, political and scientific communities – did not exist. He noted that blanket sex testing of athletes had been ditched by the IOC in 1999.

“Even if there were a sex test that everyone agreed with, I don’t think anyone wants to see a return to some of the scenes and I’ve talked to some of those athletes who underwent sex tests in their teens, it was pretty disgraceful,” he said.

“Luckily, that is behind us. This is a minefield. And unfortunately, as with all minefields, we want a simple explanation. Everyone wants a black and white explanation of how we can determine this.  That explanation does not exist, neither in the scientific community, nor anywhere else,” he continued.  

Adams suggested that the IOC was open to revisiting gender eligibility requirements in the future but said that nothing would change in the current games.

“If we can find a consensus, and we will work towards consensus, we will certainly work to apply that clearly. That’s not going to happen at these games. But this is a question in all sports. And I think we are open to listening to anyone with a solution to that question.”

In other questions, Adams addressed the raft of online abuse levelled at Khelif in the wake of Thursday’s controversial match.

“No-one likes to see aggression online by anyone. And we’ve had quite a few cases of online aggression against a whole range of athletes, even in the boxing issue, and that is not acceptable,” he said.

“We would hope that that that stops, I’m not sure we’re able to stop that. But it’s not helpful and it doesn’t help with the games.”

He batted back a suggestion that the IOC could the boxing gender row in the bud “have nipped it in the bud”.

“The question you have to ask yourself is, ‘Are these athletes women?’ The answer is, ‘yes’, according to eligibility, according to their passports, according to their history,” he said. “If we start acting on every issue, every allegation that comes up, then we start having the kind of witch hunts that we’re having now.”

Khelif will next fight Hungary‘s Anna Luca Hamori in the women’s boxing quarter-final on Saturday (August 3).