Boxing

The Imane Khelif matter resurfaces: can we find in it, somehow, our common humanity?

The Imane Khelif matter resurfaces: can we find in it, somehow, our common humanity?

The story of Imane Khelif, the Algerian athlete who won gold in the women’s boxing competition at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, is filled with layers of complication. 

The question confronting all of us now, with the story in the spotlight again Monday, is not just whether the Imane Khelif matter will ultimately prove a decisive turn in the history of female sport but, too, whether it can serve as a poignant reminder of what we all can desperately need, all the more so in our fragile and beleaguered world, to be reminded of:

Our common humanity. 

Algeria's Imane Khelif wins gold. Will this worldwide controversy spark constructive change?

Algeria's Imane Khelif wins gold. Will this worldwide controversy spark constructive change?

PARIS – In a unanimous decision, Algeria’s Imane Khelif defeated China’s Liu Yang Friday night at Roland Garros Stadium to win women’s Olympic under-66 kilogram boxing gold, a seemingly inevitable turn in the controversy that has shaken the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

The issue is not, as IOC president Thomas Bach sought to depict it Friday – who is a woman?

Rather, it’s what rules does a sport seek to apply in deciding who gets to compete in the women’s category?

Those are two different things.

Paris 2024 women's boxing stirs so much emotion -- can facts take back the moment?

Paris 2024 women's boxing stirs so much emotion -- can facts take back the moment?

PARIS – If they had been running the tournament here at the Paris Games, International Boxing Assn. officials said Monday, the Algerian and Chinese Taipei fighters now in the medal rounds in women’s boxing, both figuring in a worldwide controversy, would never have been in the ring in the first instance.

That’s because, IBA officials said, both Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Yu Ting Lin of Chinese Taipei were disqualified at the 2023 IBA women’s world championships in New Delhi upon DNA tests that showed evidence of XY chromosomes – that is, a marker each is male.

The International Olympic Committee, which is overseeing Paris 2024 boxing, opted to base eligibility on an athlete’s passport. IBA officials suggested Monday that missed the mark, noting that as of June 2023, more than a year before these Paris Games, the IOC knew about the New Delhi DQs.

In boxing, asserted Gabriele Martelle, chair of the IBA coaches commission, “When there is an unfair advantage, people can die.” He also said, “We had two cases of disqualification,” adding a moment later, “They were publicly banned because of the rules.” And: “This is a sport. We have rules. If you cannot comply, I am sorry. It’s not discrimination. It’s just the rules.”

IBA letter to IOC, June 2023: Boxer's 'DNA was that of a male consisting of XY chromosomes'

IBA letter to IOC, June 2023: Boxer's 'DNA was that of a male consisting of XY chromosomes'

PARIS – The athlete who has ignited a worldwide controversy in Olympic women’s boxing was disqualified from the 2023 International Boxing Assn. world championships in New Delhi after two tests, one in India amid that tournament and a prior test in Turkey in May 2022, “concluded the boxer’s DNA was that of a male consisting of XY chromosomes,” according to correspondence the IBA sent in June 2023 – more than a year ago – to the International Olympic Committee.

The June 5, 2023, letter, spotlighting Algeria’s Imane Khelif, reads, “This situation epitomizes the importance of protecting safe sport, and the integrity of sport in which the Olympic Movement is jointly committed to.”

3 Wire Sports has seen the letter and the tests.

Script it, fight club: American baptized by George Foreman vs. Refugee foe born in Iran

Script it, fight club: American baptized by George Foreman vs. Refugee foe born in Iran

PARIS – In the blue corner, representing the United States, from Spring, Texas, ladies and gentlemen, Roscoe Hill, dancing with orange shoes, baptized – why should you believe it because everything in boxing is 100% true but this really is – by George Foreman himself.

In the red corner, in lime-green shoes, representing the Refugee Olympic Team, Omid Ahmadisafa, a product of the Islamic Republic of Iran, a world champion in 2017 in kickboxing – not boxing, kickboxing – who three years later, while competing in Italy, sought asylum was invited to train with the German national team in Cologne.

And here we were, the rain having finally cleared outside, the stands maybe half full, perhaps 25 reporters from around the world here inside Arena Paris Nord, to take in this first-round men’s under 51-kilogram fight.

You couldn’t make it up if you tried. Script this, fight club, if you dare.

In banishing the IBA, is the IOC on the right - or wrong - side of history?

In banishing the IBA, is the IOC on the right - or wrong - side of history?

If Umar Kremlev, president of the International Boxing Association, was named, say, Bill Jones, and he was not Russian, then all of everything that has been at the root of the problem with the IBA and the International Olympic Committee would very likely have been solved long ago. 

Instead, in a historic decision, the IOC membership, by a vote of 69-1, decided Thursday to banish the IBA into the Olympic wilderness – or, in its formal language, withdraw the federation’s recognition.

The vote was predictable. Under president Thomas Bach, the members rarely if ever deviate from the recommendations of the IOC executive board.

The IOC dates to 1894. The vote Thursday is believed to be the first time in those 128 years it has severed ties with a sport’s federation. The action means zero for boxing in Paris for 2024 and Los Angeles for 2028. Boxing will be on the program. Who will run it? That’s a question.

The bigger question: will the IOC ultimately be proven on the right side of history?

Yo, Adrian: can the IBA and IOC get to — détente?

Yo, Adrian: can the IBA and IOC get to — détente?

In the iconic 1985 ahead-of-its-time Cold War-era cinematic classic, Rocky IV, Sylvester Stallone and Dolph Lundgren do battle in the boxing ring.

Stallone of course is the American Rocky Balboa. Early in the film, Lundgren, cast as the emotionless automaton Soviet Ivan Drago, beats the former heavyweight champ Apollo Creed, ultimately to death, in an exhibition bout. “If he dies, he dies,” Drago says.

Rocky decides to challenge Drago. He sets up camp in the Soviet Union on Christmas Day. He does roadwork in deep snow and works out using ancient equipment. Finally, the match. Predictably, Drago gets the better of it early, only for Rocky to come back. In the 15th and final round, Rocky knocks Drago out, avenging his friend Apollo’s death and, of course, affirming truth, justice and the American way, but never mind that.

During the fight, the once-hostile Soviet crowd, seeing how Rocky had held his ground, began to cheer for him. After winning, he grabs the mic and says, “During this fight, I’ve seen a lot of changing, the way you felt about me, and in the way I felt about you … I guess what I’m trying to say is that if I can change, and you can change, everybody can change!”

The issue is not boxing. Right or wrong, fair or not, it's Umar Kremlev

The issue is not boxing. Right or wrong, fair or not, it's Umar Kremlev

It has been nearly eight years now since Marius Vizer, then head of what was called SportAccord, launched one of the most memorable inside-the-Olympic-world attacks of all time — if not the grand prize winner, honestly —  on the International Olympic Committee, saying at a gathering in Sochi, Russia, that the IOC was running a system he called “expired, outdated, wrong, unfair and not at all transparent.”

Vizer, then and still also head of the International Judo Federation, speaks his mind. To this day. Nonetheless, he and IOC president Thomas Bach have, at least for public consumption, significantly patched up differences. And for the past eight years, no one, at least inside the Olympic landscape, has sought so directly and forcefully to take on Bach and the IOC.

Cue Umar Kremlev and the International Boxing Association.

Reality, perceptions, relationships: will AIBA get time, and a chance?

Reality, perceptions, relationships: will AIBA get time, and a chance?

Zeina Nassar is a German boxer and national champion. She is a trailblazer. Two years ago, at her urging, AIBA, the international boxing federation, changed its rules to allow female fighters to box wearing the hijab, the headscarf worn by Muslim women.

“We are all responsible,” Nassar said Monday at a wide-ranging news conference organized Monday by AIBA in Lausanne, Switzerland, the Olympic capital, “for a change.”

The changes at issue Monday were those AIBA has furiously been implementing for the past months under Russia’s Umar Kremlev, elected president last December. The aim: being back as the sport’s governing body for the Paris Games in 2024. An IOC task force overseen by gymnastics president Morinari Watanabe will run the boxing tournament at the Tokyo Olympics.

Kremlev has been outspoken about instilling an AIBA culture rooted in transparency and in globally recognized best practices of good governance; putting the federation on solid financial ground; identifying past and current instances of corruption in and out of the ring, in particular in AIBA financial dealings; and, as if all that wasn’t enough, fixing the seemingly eternal problem of badly judged or officiated— the skeptic would say fixed — fights.

It’s little wonder boxing’s place on the Olympic program is threatened.