By: Coco Xu
On August 6, 2024, Imane Khelif of Algeria defeated Thailand’s Janjaem Suwannapheng in the welterweight boxing semifinals by unanimous decision at the 2024 Paris Olympics, securing her spot in the finals on August 9 against Yang Liu of China.
Her victory arrives amid a heated dispute over Khelif’s gender after she won a fight in just 46 seconds on August 2 when her opponent, Italian Angela Carini, forfeited the match. This came after Khelif landed a heavy blow to Carini’s face. During the 2023 World Championships, Khelif and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan were disqualified after the International Boxing Association (I.B.A.) ruled that they were not eligible to compete, citing abnormally high levels of testosterone in their bodies. Now the controversy is returning, with notable figures such as Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling and Tesla founder Elon Musk voicing their opposition for the two athletes to continue competing.
The International Olympic Committee, which replaced the I.B.A. as the overseer of the boxing events, expressed strong support for Khelif and Lin. “We have two boxers who are born as a woman, who have been raised as a woman, who have a passport as a woman and who have competed for many years as a woman,” Thomas Bach, the I.O.C. president, told The New York Times. The committee also called the I.B.A.’s decision “sudden and arbitrary.”
Khelif was born in 1999 in rural northwestern Algeria. She played soccer during most of her childhood but gave it up to pursue boxing in her teenage years. She suffered a series of losses at her tournament debut in 2018 at the World Championships but improved and excelled. She was awarded the title of Best Algerian Athlete in 2021 and 2022.
The I.B.A.’s sudden ruling drew attention to the ever-murky methods used to make these types of decisions. Khelif is listed as female on her passport, and her record of losses during her debut further raise suspicions regarding the legitimacy of the tests.
Many other athletes have voiced their support for Khelif. “Personally I don’t think she has done anything to ‘cheat,’” Amy Broadhurst, an Irish boxer who beat Khelif during the 2022 IBA world championships, wrote on social media. “I (think) it’s the way she was born & that’s out of her control. The fact that she has been (beaten) by 9 females before says it all.”
The controversy sheds light on the many forms of discrimination women still face in the modern day. Pushes for protections on women’s rights in recent decades have brought us far, but Khelif’s story shows that there is still a long, long way to go.