Algerian welterweight Imane Khelif said recently that the best response to the misguided criticism and bullying she has received would be to win gold in Paris. Mission accomplished.
Today, Khelif took gold in her weight class at the 2024 Paris Olympics with a unanimous 5-0 decision over China’s Yang Liu of China.
Khelif’s time at the Olympics has been clouded by controversy by people questioning her gender. The boxer is a woman, and the confusion lies in the boxer being disqualified by the International Boxing Association last year for allegedly having XY chromosomes. However, the IOC disputed those claims and allowed Khelif to compete at the 2024 Paris Olympics as she did in the 2020 Tokyo Games.
Per GLAAD, Imane Khelif is a cisgender woman, is not transgender and does not identify as intersex. Rumors about her sex traits and that she is a man are unsubstantiated.
Variations in sex traits or differences of sexual development (DSDs) are a group of conditions involving genes, hormones and reproductive organs. According to the NIH, some people with DSDs are raised as female but may have sex chromosomes other than XX, or elevated testosterone levels. Athletes with variations in their sex traits, or DSDs, are not the same as transgender athletes. GLAAD says that conflating the two is inaccurate.
What’s more, it has never been reliably verified that Imane Khelif has a variation in sex traits or DSDs.
Khelif was reportedly disqualified by the 2023 International Boxing Association (IBA) championship due to an unspecified gender eligibility test. IBA Russian president, Umar Kremlev, claimed that DNA test results showed she and another athlete (more on her below) had XY chromosomes, citing it as the reason they were disqualified in the world championships. The IBA also cited high levels of testosterone in Khelif’s system.
Russian sports authorities do not have a great track record when it comes to gender classification and sports. The IBA was subsequently decertified as the governing international body of boxing and is not recognized by the IOC.
In an interview recently, Khelif opened up about the controversy surrounding her gender.
“I am sending a message to all people in the world to uphold the Olympic values and the Olympic regulations and stop bullying all athletes because this bullying has big effects,” she told SNTV in an interview. “It can destroy people and kill their thoughts, their spirit and their mind. Bullying can cause division and because of all this I am asking them to stop bullying.”
The IOC also addressed the controversy saying, “The Algerian Boxer was born female, was registered female, her life as a female, boxed as a female, has a female passport. This is not a transgender case… there has been some confusion, that somehow it’s a man fighting a woman. This is just not the case, scientifically on that there is consensus. Scientifically, this is not a man fighting a woman. And I think we need to kind of get that out.”
Khelif is not the only female boxer with XY chromosomes who has drawn criticism. Lin Yu-ting, representing Chinese Taipei, was the other boxer mentioned in the unsubstantiated IBA report. She will compete for gold in the featherweight division tomorrow.
“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,” said IOC President Thomas Bach.