Boxing, today the match between Angela Carini and the intersex Imane Khelif. The Iba attacks the IOC: “Inconsistency on the admission of athletes”

Paris – “While the IBA remains committed to ensuring competitive fairness at all our events, we express concern about the inconsistent application of eligibility criteria by other sports organisations, including those that supervise the Olympic Games. The different IOC regulations on these issues, in which the IBA is not involved, raise serious questions about both competitive fairness and athlete safety”. With this note, the body that manages Elite boxing, but no longer the Olympic tournament after the numerous cases of corruption in Rio 2016takes a position on the ‘Carini-Khelif’ case and on the fact that the IOC applies different systems to determine the sexual identity of those who participate in the Olympics.

“For clarification on why the IOC allows athletes with competitive advantages to compete in their events, we invite interested parties to seek answers directly from the IOC,” the IBA note continues, which also specifies that the 2023 disqualifications of Taiwanese Lin Yu-ting and Algerian Imane Khelif, who said she was “the victim of a conspiracy”, were “the result of their failure to meet the eligibility criteria for participation in the women’s competition, as established”. It is also keen to point out that “the athletes were not subjected to a testosterone test, but rather to a separate and recognised test, the details of which remain confidential. This test conclusively indicated that both athletes did not meet the necessary eligibility criteria and were found to have competitive advantages over other female competitors”. It is also recalled that Khelif had initially decided to appeal all the way to the CAS, but later abandoned the idea, while the Taiwanese athlete had not appealed at all.

What happened (and what will happen today, August 1st)

In one corner the Italian boxer Angela Carini. In the other the Algerian Imane Khelif, disqualified from the last world boxing championship for failing the gender suitability tests, which according to theInternational boxing association (Iba) would have highlighted in the DNA the presence of XY chromosomes, therefore male. They will compete today, August 1st, in the ring of the Paris Olympics, because the IOC has admitted the North African athlete to the Games, as three years ago in Tokyo, because her hormone levels would respect the expected parameters. A decision that in Italy ignites political controversy, with FdI and Lega (only Forza Italia withdraws from the majority), who go on the attack by calling the Algerian boxer “transgender”, and the government that intervenes by expressing “concern”.

“I find it hard to understand that there is no alignment in the parameters of minimum hormonal values ​​at an international level”, for “to be able to guarantee the safety of athletes, both male and femaleand respect for fair competition from a competitive point of view. On August 1st, for Angela Carini it will not be like this”, says the Minister for Sport and Youth Andrea Abodi, according to whom “the issue of transgender athletes is one that must be brought back to the category of respect in all its forms, but we must distinguish sports practice from competitiveness which must be able to allow competition on equal terms, in complete safety”. On the same wavelength government colleague Eugenia RoccellaMinister for Family, Birth Rate and Equal Opportunities: “The presence of transgender people in sports competitions implies the need to identify and guarantee rigorous, certain and unambiguous admission requirements, for a competition that is honest and balanced”, and “it is therefore of great concern to know that, during the Olympic Games in Paris, two transgender people, men who identify as women, were admitted to women’s boxing competitions”. Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the League Matteo Salvini was dry: “We have asked the Minister of Sport for information. For a man to fight against a woman seems un-Olympic to me. This man punches her, with blows, they don’t play chess”. On the FdI front, the President of the Senate Ignazio La Russa limits itself to a rhetorical question: “Boxing: an Algerian transgender against an Italian woman at the Olympic Games. Is it politically incorrect to say that I am rooting for the woman?”. While the deputy and national councilor of the Coni, Marco Perissa considers “this circumstance frankly worrying. While I fully share the value of inclusiveness, I am firmly convinced that this match will not be on equal terms” and “in the past another opponent of Khelif reported on the sidelines of the match that in her entire career she had never been hit with such violence”. To them, from the opposition, the MEP and head of rights of the PD, Alessandro Zan, responds: “The way in which the Italian right uses the Olympic Games to fuel transphobic hatred through fake news is reprehensible: Khelif is not a trans woman” but “an intersex person, who fully falls within the parameters of women’s competitions set by the IOC.

Meanwhile, while there is controversy in Rome, in Paris no concern is leaking from Angela Carini’s entourage, who will step into the ring today and will think of nothing else except trying to face the challenge with Khelif in the best possible way. “We will defer to the IOC’s decisions, she only thinks about the match, then she will say what she thinks afterwards”, it is explained. “The interlocutor who must speak with the IOC is the Olympic Committee. I know that the CONI has already raised a specific question and we are waiting for it to respond”, underlined the president of the Federboxe Flavio D’Ambrosi. The CONI has in fact announced that it has “taken action with the International Olympic Committee to ensure that the rights of all male and female athletes comply with the Olympic Charter and health regulations”. The IOC, for its part, through its spokesman Mark Adams has already expressed its thoughts on the case: “These athletes are eligible, they are women on their passport. They have been competing for many years. And I think it is not helpful to start stigmatizing people who practice sports like this,” Adams said during the daily briefing. He then added: “I think we all have a responsibility to try to mitigate this situation and don’t turn it into some kind of witch hunt.”