An official of the World Boxing Organization (WBO) now says that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was warned ahead of time that at least one of the two controversial boxers who are tearing through female opponents in Paris had failed gender tests.
Hungarian István Kovács, the European vice president of WBO and former Secretary General of the International Boxing Association, told the media in his country that the IOC was told in 2022 that Algerian boxer Imane Khelif had failed the gender test and was a male as far as his group was concerned.
In 2023, the International Boxing Association (IBA) President Umar Kremlev explained his organization’s decision to disqualify Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting and Algeria’s Imane Khelif from competing in the IBA’s 2023 Women’s World Boxing Championships, according to Russia’s Tass News Agency. “Based on DNA tests, we identified a number of athletes who tried to trick their colleagues into posing as women. According to the results of the tests, it was proved that they have XY chromosomes. Such athletes were excluded from competition,” Kremlev said.
“The problem was not with the level of Khelif’s testosterone, because that can be adjusted nowadays, but with the result of the gender test, which clearly revealed that the Algerian boxer is biologically male,” Kovács told Magyar Nemzet. He noted that five boxers had been examined and all of them “were indeed men,” including Khelif.
In fact, Kovács says that he reported the test results to the IOC himself. He added that Olympics officials ignored him, adding, “But as unbelievable as it is, they have not responded to this to this day.”
The official also said that he had urged Hungary’s Anna Luca Hámori not to fight Khelif because he did not feel that Hámori had been properly trained to fight a man.
“The biggest problem is that Hámori can only realize her big dream of winning a medal at the summer games at the first Olympics of her life if she beats a man. She was simply not trained for this,” Kovács told the media.
Regardless, Hámori has engaged in some pre-fight hectoring by calling Khelif a horned male devil on social media but was forced to delete the post after the Algerian team filed a complaint with the IOC.
Krelif easily defeated the Hungarian on Saturday and will go on to the finals.
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