PARIS — Less than a minute into her controversial fight against an Algerian boxer who failed a gender eligibility test last year, Italy’s Angela Carini decided she was done.
Just 40 seconds into the first round, Carini raised her hand to stop the fight after being hit by a flurry of punches from Algerian Imane Khelif. Carini told her trainer Emanuel Renzini that her nose was in too much pain to continue. Renzini encouraged her to try to go all the way through the first round so they could continue talking. Six seconds later, Carini raised her hand again after being hit by one more punch from Khelif and asked to stop the fight.
“She’s too strong,” Renzini recalled Carini telling him.
A tearful Carini addressed reporters for 20 minutes after the fight, apologizing to his country for not being able to continue and lamenting that he had worked so hard for this moment only to have it end so quickly.
“I entered the ring to fight,” Carini said in Italian afterwards. “I didn’t give up, but one punch hurt me too much and I said enough. I’m coming out with my head held high.”
Khelif was escorted by her coaches past reporters and did not stop to speak after the fight. Just a day earlier, Algeria’s Olympic committee issued a statement strongly condemning “the unethical persecution and defamation” of Khelif by foreign media.
“These attacks on her character and dignity are deeply unfair, especially as she prepares for the pinnacle of her career at the Olympic Games,” the statement read.
Khelif’s absolutely dominant performance on Thursday will only ignite debate over whether she and China’s Lin Yu-ting of Taipei should be allowed to compete at the Paris Olympics. Last year at the World Championships in New Delhi, Khelif’s failure to pass a gender eligibility test led the International Boxing Association to disqualify her hours before her gold medal match. Yu-ting was disqualified before the bronze medal match for the same reason.
The International Olympic Committee has since stripped the IBA of its status as boxing’s world governing body due to long-standing governance issues and a series of scandals involving judges. That leaves boxing in Paris under the umbrella of the IOC’s Paris 2024 boxing unit, which has more lax rules than the IBA had and has chosen to ignore the results of Khelif and Yu-Ting’s gender eligibility tests last year.
Asked about Khelif and Yu-ting on Tuesday, IOC spokesman Mark Adams said: “I would simply say that everyone competing in the women’s category meets the eligibility rules of the competition. They are women on their passports.”
“These athletes have competed many times before, over many years,” Adams added. “They didn’t just come in overnight.”