South African runner Caster Semenya, who was once the subject of her own gender controversy, is speaking out in defence of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif amid a similar uproar at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“Imane is a great boxer and people always criticise when someone does well, people always talk about it. When (Khelif) didn’t win, then everyone was silent,” two-time Olympic gold medallist Semenya told the English-language website. SportsBoom.com.
Khelif (9-5 as a pro) comfortably won her first two fights in Paris, but the end of her Olympic debut ignited controversy when her opponent Angela Carini of Italy retired in tears after just 46 seconds, saying she was in too much pain from Khelif’s punches.
Khelif and Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-Ting were previously disqualified by the International Boxing Association midway through last year’s world championships for allegedly failing eligibility tests for women’s competition.
The IBA has been banned from the Olympics since before the Tokyo Games, and the Russia-linked body struggled to articulate the reasoning for its decisions on Khelif and Lin at a news conference on Monday.
Algeria’s Imane Khelif sits on the ropes after winning her fight against Anna Luca Hamori
Caster Semenya of Team South Africa reacts after the 2022 Women’s 5000m Qualifiers
“The IOC policy and constitution should not contradict each other,” Semenya said. “Sport is for everyone and the constitution says no to discrimination. But the moment they allowed women to be dishonoured, we were mistaken.”
“If sport is for everyone, why does the big governing body allow this kind of thing to happen? They should stand firm and lead by example. This is about quality leadership that safeguards, protects and respects women.”
Khelif will face Thailand’s Janjaem Suwannapheng in the boxing semi-finals on Tuesday night at Roland Garros, the famed tennis resort in Paris. The winner will advance to the women’s 66kg final on Friday night.
Lin, meanwhile, also won a medal and advanced to the Olympic semi-finals. She will fight Esra Yildiz Kahraman of Turkey in the first match on Wednesday night at Roland Garros.
Semenya, 33, has faced her own gender battle after being born with differences of sex development (DSD), which left her with elevated levels of testosterone, muscle mass and strength.
According to World Athletics, she is not allowed to compete in women’s track events without taking gender-based hormone treatment to reduce her testosterone level, something she refuses to do, saying it makes her feel unwell.
“At the end of the day, I know I’m different,” she told the BBC in 2023. “I don’t care about medical terms or what people tell me about being born without a uterus or having internal testicles. It doesn’t make me any less of a woman.
“Those are the differences I was born with and I will embrace them. I am not going to be ashamed of being different. I am different and special and I feel very good about it.”
Semenya, who rejects the “intersex” label, is now focused primarily on protecting athletes in similar positions.
“It’s one of the reasons we’re fighting for women’s sport,” she told the BBC. “The importance of women’s sport is not taken seriously and we need to take charge of our own bodies. Decide what’s right for us. Not have another gender decide how we should look.”
“It’s up to us whether we are women enough or not. We know and believe in what is right, so why should we stop doing it?”
In 2009, he was sidelined for 11 months due to track and field rules on hormone levels. He has spent years battling legal challenges to requirements that he suppress his natural testosterone in order to compete.
Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-Ting was disqualified by the International Boxing Association in 2023
Critics of the rules – which were implemented in 2011 and have been tightened over the years – have cast naturally high testosterone levels as a genetic gift, comparing them to the height of a basketball player or the long arms of a swimmer.
“No one disqualified Michael Phelps for having particular biological characteristics that allowed him to excel in swimming,” medical anthropologist Danyal Kade Doyle Griffiths, an adjunct professor at City University of New York, told The Associated Press.
Like Semenya, Khelif was assigned female at birth and never identified as anything other than a woman.
Unsubstantiated claims that she is a man or transgender emerged after the controversial boxing association with Russian links said she failed an opaque eligibility test ahead of last year’s world boxing championships.
Russian networks amplified the debate, which quickly became a trending topic on the Internet. British media outlets, author JK Rowling and right-wing politicians such as Donald Trump joined in the deluge. At its peak late last week, X users were posting about the boxer tens of thousands of times an hour, according to an analysis by PeakMetrics, a cyber firm that tracks online narratives.
The boxing group at the root of the allegations – the International Boxing Association – has been permanently banned from the Olympics, has a Russian chairman who is an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and its biggest sponsor is the state energy company Gazprom. Questions have also been raised about its decision to disqualify Khelif last year after she beat a Russian boxer.
Russian state media have spread some of the same false and misleading content. Instead of covering sports competitions, much of the Olympic coverage has focused on crime, immigration, litter and pollution.
Whitlock claims that Khelif, who is a biological female, should not be allowed to fight women.
An article published in the state news service Sputnik summed it up: “These ‘games’ in Paris are going swimmingly. Here’s an idea: stop awarding the Olympics to the decadent and rotten West.”
Russia has used propaganda to disparage past Olympics, as it did when the then-Soviet Union boycotted the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.
At the time, he distributed printed material to Olympic officials in Africa and Asia suggesting that nonwhite athletes would be targeted by racists in the U.S., according to an analysis by Microsoft Threat Intelligence, a unit within the technology company that studies malicious actors online.
Russia has also targeted past Olympics with cyberattacks.
“If they cannot participate in or win the Games, then they seek to undermine, defame and degrade international competition in the minds of participants, spectators and global audiences,” Microsoft analysts concluded.
A message left with the Russian government was not immediately returned Monday.