Olympic boxing has had the occasional moment of heat and light down the years. There have been walk-outs and sit-ins and judging funks. The Cuba-USA face-offs have been good value. More often boxing is a distant presence at the big summer fair, hived off on an outer table like a low-ranking uncle, staged in some echoey hall, crammed in between the big ticket events.
At which point: welcome to Paris 2024. We aren’t just through the looking-glass here, but through quite a few of them, simultaneously, with no obvious way back. Welcome to Olympic boxing as hostile geopolitics, as a theatre of the global pile-on, a place where hugely important issues that actually affect people’s lives are translated into macro-opportunism and sabre rattling at one remove.
At the centre of this, buffeted from all sides, are two women in their 20s who are not trying to cheat or dope, who were, as far as their documentation says, born female and have always considered themselves female, who may or may not have – opinions are set but the facts are not yet clear – a condition sometimes known as DSD (differences in sex development).
This can take many forms but is often present as otherwise concealed male hormones and organs that can generate an athletic advantage. In the past this has often been something athletes only discover at competition stage, which can be traumatic in itself.
Should we treat this with care, tact and sensitivity? Well, that would certainly be one way to go. On the other hand we have the real world. We have boxing at Paris 2024, a place of misinformation and half-truths, of hugely influential opinions formed on stills and optics, with little regard to the humans at the heart of this. The sport entered the realm of genuine farce this week with the surreal press conference staged by the International Boxing Association, a series of exchanges that were both chaotic and also deeply telling.
This was one of those moments where the bones of these things start to show. Most obviously, here we have a room full of powerful middle-aged men arguing with another room full of powerful middle-aged men over what exactly women’s sport should look like. Throughout this each room full of men will present themselves as advocates, allies, saviours, freedom fighters for female wellbeing and all the rest of it.
This may or may not be a good-faith debate about the rights of women in sport. But it is also quite clearly a power struggle between two sports organisations with opposed and hostile national associations. It is public relations on the global scale, a political struggle in which the rights of men and women and the unresolved and emotive issue of trans rights are simply amplifiers, bargaining chips, agents of influence.
Most notably Umar Kremlev, IBA president, friend of Vladimir Putin, basically told us who he is. Here are some of the things this voice of hard facts on gender identity told the assembled global media …
“We don’t verify what they have between their legs,” was one early zinger, as Kremlev sat against a backdrop of Christian iconography, presumably to project a sense of pious moral authority. Thomas Bach was once again referred to by a homophobic slur, apparently extrapolated from the Paris 2024 opening ceremony.
Kremlev added that the Olympics was “trying to do everything to destroy feminine sports competitions”, which is in itself patent nonsense. Sat next to him, Ioannis Filippatos, a doctor and also an IBA executive, said he knows what women are and has delivered lots of babies.
“As a Christian, believing in God, I disagree with this presentation of the scripture,” Kremlev said at one point, which is fine, but, like, can we see the medical reports please? No light was shed on the IBA’s stance on women with abnormal sexual characteristics. There was just a constant blunt insistence that “they are men”.
Essentially, this was a room full of lobbyists with skin in a much larger game. The IOC and the IBA have been in conflict since 2019, when the IBA was suspended as the body in charge of Olympic boxing.
Given the open animosity, given Kremlev’s connections, given Russia’s stated goal of disrupting the Games, it seems astonishing the IOC failed to anticipate this issue arising, failed to make some harder rules, and in the process allowing itself to be bullied, blindsided and made to look generally ridiculous by a hostile body.
When you’ve allowed someone such as Kremlev to pitch himself as an advocate for basic rights and the grownup in the room, well, something really has gone badly wrong. Bach clearly hoped this issue would simply go away. It is an appallingly lax and weak piece of governance. It should, frankly, be a resigning issue.
Worse, the IOC has also allowed the two women at the centre of this, whatever the ultimate outcome of their own situation, to become pawns in that battle.
This is the one element that continues to be overlooked, the fact the two boxers didn’t ask for any of this, and are essentially the people this is happening to. Khelif has been boxing at this level since 2018, Lin since 2017. Khelif comes from a place of extreme poverty, and a conservative family in a conservative country. Her father is an unemployed welder, forced to show the world’s media birth certificates and pictures of his daughter as a little girl.
She has spoken of the huge effect the outside pressure has had on her, the feeling of being bullied, not just by another person, but by the entire world. Her previous opponent, Luca Hamori, had spent the week saying provocative things in the Hungarian media and posting snidey pictures of her fighting a minotaur. As a tearful Khelif rushed through a heaving mixed zone after her victory, the former Algerian athlete Hassiba Boulmerka could be heard shouting: “Leave her alone! She is going through hell.”
The same goes for Lin Yu-Ting, who was also born and raised as a girl, who is much loved in Taiwan, known affectionately as Ting on Taiwanese social media – insta handle Tingboxing – and whose treatment has also sparked a backlash of protective anger.
Through all this IOC has been exposed as weak, dithering and evasive. Kremlev, whatever the rights and wrongs, is clearly spoiling for another kind of fight. These are such hugely complex issues, not just for sport but for humans everywhere, for the rights of girls to access sport and compete in their own space, for elite and amateur athletes, for transgender people, who have basically been dragged into someone else’s battle.
Perhaps the kindest voice this week has come from the 35-year-old French boxer Emilie Sonvico, who told L’Equipe about the way sex tests have traditionally been held in the past, describing them as “visual tests, during tournaments”, adding: “That is to say, we lower our pants. The first time, I was not aware and I did not understand. The second time, I had been warned and I even arrived in a bra.” Yes, welcome to boxing. Definitely the ideal theatre for these issues to be resolved.
Sonvico sounded impressively phlegmatic about the current furore in the women’s Olympic division. She has fought Khelif in the past and is not that impressed by her power. “She’s not the most powerful I’ve faced. She hits hard, but she’s not a puncher who can knock you out in one hit.”
Best of all Sonvico, who is a female athlete, who has been intimately involved in boxing, had the most level-headed suggestion for a resolution. “After the Games, the leaders will have to sit down around a table and stop hiding this problem. But, for Khelif, this controversy was not necessary. Women with abnormal physiques already have enough pressure in their everyday lives. If they have to be insulted on top of that, it’s very hard.”
