Algeria’s Imane Khelif (right) walks alongside Italy’s Angela Carini after their women’s 66kg boxing match at the Paris Olympics on Thursday.
19:27 JST, August 3, 2024
PARIS (AP) — IOC President Thomas Bach said Saturday that the “hate speech” directed at boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting during the Paris Olympics was “completely unacceptable.”
“We will not participate in a politically motivated… culture war,” Bach said at a news conference.
Algeria’s Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin have been under global scrutiny for days because of their gender, with both women disqualified from the 2023 World Championships.
Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting reacts after her win over Uzbekistan’s Sitora Turdibekova in their women’s 57kg preliminary round on Friday.
The Russian International Boxing Association, which has been banned from the Olympic Games by the IOC after a years-long dispute, withdrew them from the World Championships in India 16 months ago, citing the still unknown and unproven gender tests.
“We have two boxers who were born as women, who were raised as women, who have a passport as women, and who have fought as women for years,” Bach said. “Some want a definition of who a woman is.”
Both Khelif and Lin competed at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and failed to win medals.
