Gender identity dispute surrounding boxers Lin Yu-ting and Imane Khelif condemned by IOC president

Algerian boxer Imane Khelif won her match on Saturday and will be guaranteed a spot on the podium just hours after International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach defended its decision to allow her and fellow boxer Lin Yu-ting to compete, saying concerns over their gender identity are “totally unacceptable.”

During her fight on Saturday against Hungarian Anna Luca Hamori, Khelif appeared to have a sizable cheering section chanting her name, “Imane, Imane, Imane!” and waving Algerian flags.

With Khelif’s latest win, she is guaranteed at least a bronze medal.

Bach forcefully defended the two women’s inclusion in the Olympics and blasted the pushback as “hate speech.”

“We have two boxers who were born as women, who have been raised as women, who have a passport as a woman, and who have competed for many years as women,” Bach said at a media briefing Saturday.

Questions surrounding Yu-ting’s and Khelif’s gender identity surfaced after it was revealed they had been disqualified from competing with women at a global event last year, but were cleared by the IOC to compete in the women’s 66-kilogram and women’s 57-kilogram matches at the Paris Games.

The debate was further inflamed Thursday after Angela Carini of Italy quit 46 seconds into her match against Khelif, resulting in an automatic win for the Algerian boxer. Carini stopped the fight after only a few punches were exchanged and refused to shake Khelif’s hand. Carini, 25, fell onto the floor in tears.

Bach said there was “never any doubt” about Yu-ting and Khelif being women. Both boxers have always competed in women’s divisions and there’s no indication that they identify as transgender or intersex, the latter referring to people born with sex characteristics that do not fit strictly into the male-female gender binary.

“What we see now is that some want to own the definition of who is a woman,” Bach said, adding: “All this hate speech, aggression and abuse … is totally unacceptable.”

At a boxing event last year, the athletes failed to meet gender eligibility tests at the Women’s World Boxing Championships in New Delhi by the International Boxing Association. They were both disqualified after sporting officials said they failed an unspecified test because they allegedly had male chromosomes.

The IAB, whose president is Umar Kremlev of Russia and is an associate of President Vladimir Putin, claimed the fighters had failed unspecified eligibility tests. The decision came shortly after Khelif beat Russian boxer Azalia Amineva, who was previously undefeated.

Khelif, 25, who made her Olympic debut at the Tokyo Games, has said her disqualification was a “conspiracy.”

Her father, Amar Khelif, said the attacks against the athlete are “immoral.”

“It is not fair,” he recently told Reuters.

He said his daughter has always loved sports since she was a child and used to play football. Amar Khelif insisted that she was born a female.

“She made us proud many times, she honored our country and our flag many times and she always made us happy with her results,” he said. “These critics aim to destabilize her to fail in the wrestling ring but she is a champion and she will remain a champion.”

Carini said after her loss on Thursday that she ended the match because of a “severe pain” in her nose. She said that she was not qualified to make decisions on whether Khelif should be allowed to compete.

Others, including “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling, who has often come under fire over her anti-trans comments, quickly criticized the match and the IOC’s decision.

“A young female boxer has just had everything she’s worked and trained for snatched away because you allowed a male to get in the ring with her,” Rowling wrote, reposting a video of an IOC official speaking on the committee’s mental health and safeguarding initiatives.

“You’re a disgrace, your ‘safeguarding’ is a joke and #Paris24 will be forever tarnished by the brutal injustice done to Carini,” Rowling added.

Former President Donald Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social: “I WILL KEEP MEN OUT OF WOMEN’S SPORTS!”

Others came to Khelif’s defense and celebrated her win.

“I strongly condemn the baseless attacks on our athlete, Imane Khelif, by certain foreign outlets,” Abderrahmane Hammad, Algeria’s minister of youth and sports, wrote on X.

He slammed questions about her gender identity as “cowardly attempts to tarnish her reputation.”

Ismaël Bennacer, a soccer player for the Algerian national team, wrote that he fully supports Khelif.

“Her presence at the Olympic Games is simply the result of her talent and hard work,” he said on X.

The National Black Justice Collective, a civil rights organization that aims to protect Black LGBTQ people, said it stands in solidarity with Khelif.

“Simply put, Imane Khelif and the other athletes being targeted met the criteria to compete in the Olympics. They deserve to compete as much as every other athlete who trained, prepared, and qualified for the most significant opportunity in their sport. An opportunity now dampened by internet trolls and evangelical zealots consumed with ignorance and a disregard for how weaponized hate can threaten one’s livelihood and life,” the organization said in a statement.

Nonbinary Olympic American runner Nikki Hiltz called out transphobia at the Olympics.

“Anti-trans rhetoric is anti-woman,” she wrote in an Instagram story on Friday. “These people aren’t ‘protecting women’s sports,’ they are enforcing rigid gender norms and anyone who doesn’t fit perfectly into those norms is targeted and vilified.”

Khelif’s next match is Saturday against Hungary’s Anna Luca Hamori. Yu-ting, 28, beat Uzbekistan’s Sitora Turdibekova on Friday and will face Bulgaria’s Svetlana Kamenova Staneva on Sunday.