Algeria’s Imane Khelif, reacts after defeating Italy’s Angela Carini of their girls’s 66kg preliminary boxing match on the Paris Olympics 2024, Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Picture/John Locher)
PARIS — IOC President Thomas Bach mentioned Saturday the “hate speech” directed at boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting on the Paris Olympics is “completely unacceptable.”
“We won’t participate in a politically motivated … cultural battle,” Bach mentioned at a information briefing.
Khelif of Algeria and Lin of Taiwan have been subjected to days of world scrutiny about their gender. Each girls have been disqualified on the 2023 world championships.
The Russian-led Worldwide Boxing Affiliation — which has been banished from the Olympics by the IOC in a yearslong dispute — eliminated them from the worlds 16 months in the past in India citing gender-based assessments which can be nonetheless unspecified and unproven.
“We’ve got two boxers who’re born as girls, who’ve been raised as girls, who’ve a passport as a lady and have competed for a few years as girls,” Bach mentioned. “Some wish to personal a definition of who’s a girls.”
Each Khelif and Lin competed on the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and didn’t win medals.
