PARIS– Not long after the Algerian boxer, at the center of a controversy over gender misconceptions, won a gold medal in the Paris OlympicsDonald Trump capitalized on the achievement at a rally more than 7,000 miles away in Bozeman, Montana.
The former president used the saga surrounding Imane Khelif as part of the culture wars raging across America ahead of the November elections. Khelif faced a extraordinary amount of scrutiny from world leaders, celebrities and social media warriors who questioned her eligibility or falsely claimed she was a man.
She won gold Friday night, just before Trump’s speech in Montana.
“I would like to congratulate the young woman who made the transition from man to boxer. If you saw, he won, she won the gold medal,” said Trump, who imitated the Italian boxer who withdrew from the fight against Khelif because she was overwhelmed.
Trump has repeatedly and incorrectly referred to Khelif as “he.”
There are no apolitical Olympics, and this has become very clear since the dazzling opening ceremony in Paris that offended religious groups and also drew criticism from Trump. And so, the two-week sporting spectacle was pulled into the political discourse that was pulsing in the United States.
It is not a new phenomenon, as the link between politics and the Olympic Games has gone hand in hand since they were revived at the end of the 19th century – optimistically announced as a way for nations to compete without going to war.
“The Olympics are always drawn into political discourse due to the nature of the competition, in which nations compete against each other for dominance. This foundation in nationalism means that, at its core, the Olympic Games are about nationalism first and athletics second,” said Zein Murib, associate professor of political science at Fordham University.
“Furthermore, the Olympics have been used to tolerate or punish nations, as is the case in Germany in 1936, when the Olympics were held in Nazi Germany despite global outcry that this would be tolerating the regime, or 2024, when athletes Russians were excluded due to the invasion of Ukraine.”
For the Paris Games, the International Olympic Committee banned Russian athletes who are in the army or publicly supported the invasion of Ukraine. The IOC has also blocked Russians from team sports, while athletics has imposed its own blanket ban.
In gymnastics and weightlifting, Russian teams skipped qualifiers in protest at being forced to compete as neutrals or undergo checks, including checks of their social media.
There is 32 “neutral” athletes at these Games, 17 of which previously represented Belarus and 15 represented Russia. They compete under the status of “Individual Neutral Athletes” and were not allowed to participate in the opening ceremony. The Summer Games in Tokyo three years ago featured more than 300 Russian athletes.
A political coup against these Games came in the form of a video which portrayed Paris as a crime-infested cesspool and mocked the Olympics. The video spread quickly on social media as 30,000 social media bots were linked to a notorious Russian disinformation group. Within days, the video was available in 13 languages thanks to rapid AI translation.
It was a way for Moscow to make its presence felt in Paris, as groups linked to the Russian government used online disinformation and state propaganda to attack France. It was proof that global events like the Olympics are now important targets of online disinformation and advertising.
Murib said political tension linked to this year’s Olympic Games has increased because a coordinated group of “bad actors” has grown significantly and gained enormous global reach over the past decade.
Tensions were high at the opening of the Games, when the high-speed railway in France was stopped by coordinated arson attacks. Even before the Olympics, French authorities said they had foiled several sabotage plots, including the arrest of a Russian man who planned to destabilize the Games
“I think people on all sides of the political spectrum look to athletic competition as a barometer of the legitimacy of government logics, and many will consider victories – and defeats – as lessons for the viability of democracy or authoritarianism,” he said. Murib. “We can see this at play in the way Trump immediately weighed in on Imane Khelif’s eligibility for the Olympics with the far-right trope of keeping men out of women’s sports.”
Khelif filed a legal complaint in France for online harassment.
Despite the dramas, these Games will be remembered as an overwhelming success. Paris was on full display with breathtaking – and accessible by public transport – venues, star performances from athletes and spectators for the first time since before the 2020 global pandemic.
NBC across all platforms set viewership records with millions of people tuning in daily, despite statements on social media that individuals were “ boycott “the Olympics is because of” he remembered “opening ceremony or Khelif.
Paris on Sunday night handed over the Olympic flag to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who on Monday took it back to California for preparations ahead of the 2028 Games. Bass and LA 2028 President Casey Wasserman recognized that the result of the November presidential elections will have some effect on their Games, but they are not worried that the winner will create problems for them.
The organizers of LA 2028 followed the Paris Games closely and know that they will be closely watched by the public — both to criticize and to praise.
“More than anything, what I learned here, and what I give the French team a lot of credit for, is that they were willing to do things differently and take risks,” Wasserman said. “That didn’t mean they would all be perfect or work, and most of them did, and they were spectacular. But they really thought outside the box, obviously starting with the opening ceremony.”
Wasserman said the Paris organizers’ approach made him step back and ask “how can we do things differently and do the right things for our city and our communities?”
“The Olympics is a scary project and you have to be willing to take risks and swings, big swings,” Wasserman added. “It’s a good lesson for us to really take a very intentional and careful attitude, to take chances on things that we might not have.”
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