Paris Olympics 2024: IOC Chief Defends Boxers Caught In Gender Row, Says Won’t Tolerate ‘Politically Motivated Cultural War’

Paris: The World Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach has defended the participation of boxers, Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting inner the Paris 2024 Olympics even with being ‘biologically male’. The controversy centres across the eligibility of Khelif, from Algeria, and Lin, a Taiwanese double world champion, the two of whom had been earlier disqualified from the 2023 World Championships for failing the World Boxing Association’s (IBA) eligibility criteria.

The IBA’s regulation exclude athletes with male XY chromosomes, medically considered as biologically male, from competing in girls’s concerns to do, which ended in the disqualification of Khelif and Lin even with their longstanding popularity as female opponents.

Addressing the media on Saturday, Bach affirmed the IOC’s role, emphasizing that the two athletes had been born, raised, and which also may possibly be is termed girls legally and professionally.

“Let’s be very clear here. We're speaking about girls’s boxing, and now we have two boxers who had been born as girls, who've been raised as girls, who've a passport as girls, and who've competed for a pair of years as girls. And that's the clear definition of a feminine,” Bach cited. He firmly pushed aside any doubts about their gender identification.

The controversy gained big hobby after Khelif’s swift victory over Italy’s Angela Carini in a welterweight Round-of-16 bout, performed in precisely 46 seconds. The controversy intensified because the IOC’s resolution to enable Khelif and Lin to compete in Paris drew scrutiny and sparked a broader dialog about gender and eligibility in exercises concerns to do.

Bach condemned the backlash and hate speech directed on the athletes, the two on line and in public discourse. He criticised these making an try and redefine the criteria of womanhood for curiously political capabilities.

“What we see now also may possibly be that some very own the definition of who's a feminine. And there I may handiest invite them to give you with with a scientific-based new definition of who's a feminine,” he advised. He pressured that the IOC is open to keen about new scientific proof but will now not have interaction in what he described as a “politically inspired cultural battle.”

The IOC’s stance comes inner the wake of its resolution remaining 12 months to strip the IBA of its world consideration, following disorders over governance troubles.

Despite the uproar surrounding Khelif and Lin’s participation, the IOC has maintained its support for the athletes’ acceptable to compete, declaring that their eligibility aligns with the manufacturer’s definitions and standards.