Italian boxer Angela Carini stopped her fight just 46 seconds in and broke down in tears after being hit twice by her opponent, Imane Khelif, an Algerian fighter who had been disqualified for the women’s World Championship in 2023 after failing testosterone and gender eligibility tests.
According to International Amateur Boxing President Umar Kremlev, DNA tests had “proved [Khelif] had XY chromosomes and were thus excluded.”
In Carini’s match against Khelif, one punch “dislodged her chinstrap and a second smashed against her chin and bloodied her shorts,” The Guardian reported.
Fight lasted just 46s /3 pic.twitter.com/SZMd8OUkMD
— FairPlayForWomen (@fairplaywomen) August 1, 2024
“I want to show you something. I don’t know if you can hear; he’s my father,” Carini said in tears after the fight, holding up a phone to show a photo of her father. “I did the ‘last kilometer’ because one day, I felt tired. Before Tokyo, I felt tired. I said, ‘Dad, I’m tired, the training is intense, but I won’t give up.’ He said to me, ‘Angelina, a champion is a bit like cycling; the champion, when they see the last kilometer, you know what they do? They pedal even harder. So you reach that last kilometer and pedal. Go all the way, because I’ll always be with you.’ And so I did. Until the end, I fought with blood in my eyes because I wanted this victory at all costs just for my father.”
Notably, in 2021, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) released new guidelines stating that women-identifying individuals – regardless of their biology – would no longer be required to reduce their testosterone levels in order to compete in the women’s sports category.
The IOC said it would use this framework to “promote a safe and welcoming environment for everyone,” adding that the framework “also acknowledges the central role that eligibility criteria play in ensuring fairness.”
The IOC’s new framework concludes that there should be no presumption that transgender women have a physical advantage over women.
