VILLEPINTE, France – Algerian boxer Imane Khelif won her fight on Saturday and will be guaranteed a place on the podium just hours after International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach defended his decision to allow her and fellow boxer Lin Yu-ting compete, saying concerns about their gender identity is “totally unacceptable”.
With Khelif’s latest victory, she guarantees at least the bronze medal.
“I want to tell the whole world that I am a woman and will remain a woman,” she said.
She appeared to be holding back tears and had an Algerian flag draped across her back as she spoke.
“I dedicate this medal to the world and to all Arabs and I say to you: ‘Long live Algeria!’ she told reporters in a wild post-match melee.
During her fight on Saturday against Hungary’s Anna Luca Hamori, Khelif appeared to have a sizable crowd chanting her name: “Imane, Imane, Imane!” and waving Algerian flags.
Five judges scored each of the three rounds for Khelif. The judges had it 10-9 in each round, except for the one who called the second round, 10-8, for the Algerian.
Hamori boasted that he was not afraid of Khelif and fueled claims that the Algerian was not a woman. But at the end of the match, it appeared that the combatants exchanged pleasantries with each other and their corners.
Before the match, Bach strongly defended the inclusion of Khelif and Yu-ting in the Olympics and called the reaction “hate speech”.
“We have two boxers who were born as women, who were raised as women, who have a woman’s passport and who competed for many years as women,” Bach said at a press conference. media briefing Saturday.
Questions surrounding Yu-ting and Khelif’s gender identity arose after it was revealed that they had been disqualified from competing against women at a global event last year, but were cleared by the IOC to compete in the women’s 66 kilogram and women’s matches. weighing 57 kilos at the Paris Games.
The debate became even more heated on Thursday after Italy’s Angela Carini withdrew 46 seconds into her match against Khelif, resulting in the Algerian boxer’s automatic victory. Carini stopped the fight after just a few punches and refused to shake Khelif’s hand. Carini, 25, fell to 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 categories and there is no indication that they identify as transgender or intersex, the latter referring to people born with sexual characteristics that do not strictly fit 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, athletes failed gender eligibility tests at the Women’s World Boxing Championships in New Delhi, held by the International Boxing Association. Both were disqualified after sports 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, alleged that the fighters failed unspecified eligibility tests. The decision came shortly after Khelif defeated Russian boxer Azalia Amineva, who was undefeated until then.
Khelif, 25, who made his Olympic debut at the Tokyo Games, said his disqualification was a “conspiracy”.
Her father, Amar Khelif, said the attacks against the athlete were “immoral”.
“It’s not fair,” he recently told Reuters.
He said his daughter has always liked sports since she was a child and used to play football. Amar Khelif insisted that she be born a woman.
“She often made us proud, often honored our country and our flag and always made us happy with her results,” he said. “These critics are out to destabilize her to fail in the wrestling ring, but she is a champion and will continue to be a champion.”
Carini said after the defeat on Thursday that he ended the match because of a “severe pain” in his nose. She said she was not qualified to make decisions about whether Khelif should be allowed to compete.
Others, including “Harry Potter” author JK Rowling, who has often been criticized for her anti-trans comments, were quick to criticize the match and the IOC’s decision.
“A young boxer had everything she worked for and trained stolen because you allowed a man to enter the ring with her,” Rowling he wroteRepublishing a video of an IOC official speaking about the committee’s mental health and safeguarding initiatives.
“You are a disgrace, your ‘safeguard’ is a joke and #Paris24 will forever be tarnished by the brutal injustice done to Carini,” Rowling added.
Former President Donald Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social, “I’m going to keep men out of women’s sports!”
Others came to Khelif’s defense and celebrated his victory.
“I strongly condemn the baseless attacks on our athlete, Imane Khelif, by certain foreign media outlets,” said Abderrahmane Hammad, Algeria’s Minister of Youth and Sports. he wrote in X.
He criticized questions about his gender identity as “cowardly attempts to tarnish his reputation.”
Ismaël Bennacer, a football player for the Algerian national team and also for the club AC Milan, wrote that he fully supports Khelif.
“Your presence at the Olympic Games is simply the result of your talent and hard work,” he said he said in 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 targeted athletes met the criteria to compete in the Olympics. They deserve to compete as much as any other athlete who has trained, prepared and qualified for their sport’s most significant opportunity. An opportunity now blunted by Internet trolls and evangelical fanatics consumed by ignorance and disregard for how armed hatred can threaten a person’s livelihood and life,” the organization said in a statement.
American non-binary Olympic runner Nikki Hiltz denounced transphobia at the Olympics.
“Anti-trans rhetoric is anti-woman,” she wrote in an Instagram Story on Friday. “These people are not ‘protecting women’s sport’, they are enforcing strict gender norms and anyone who doesn’t perfectly fit those norms is targeted and vilified.”
Khelif fought on Saturday, defeating Hungarian Anna Luca Hamori. Yu-ting, 28, defeated Sitora Turdibekova of Uzbekistan on Friday and will face Svetlana Kamenova Staneva of Bulgaria on Sunday.
Minyvonne Burke reported from Pittsburgh, David K. Li reported from Villepinte, and Rima Abdelkader reported from Stamford.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
