Former President Donald Trump has pledged to prevent men from participating in women’s sports following a forfeited women’s boxing match at the Paris Olympics.
In a viral clip that the Republican presidential nominee shared on Truth Social, Italian fighter Angela Carini stops her match against Algerian fighter Imane Khelif after 46 seconds.
Referring to the single blow to the face she received from Khelif, Carini said, “I have never felt a punch like this.”
“I felt a severe pain in my nose, and with the maturity of a boxer, I said ‘enough,’ because I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to, I couldn’t finish the match," she added, per ABC News.
Trump echoed a sense of outrage expressed by a number of politicians, pundits and X users on Thursday.
“I WILL KEEP MEN OUT OF WOMEN’S SPORTS!” he wrote on Truth Social. I WILL KEEP MEN OUT OF WOMEN’S SPORTS!
Donald Trump Truth Social 01:59 PM EST 08/01/24 @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/Xq9D893250
— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) August 1, 2024
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Col.) established a GiveSendGo campaign for Carini that aims to raise the $196,000 that Italy reportedly pays its athletes for winning a gold medal.
Professional boxer Jake Paul also commented on Carini’s loss.
“To Angela Carini although your dreams couldn’t come true today because of the crazy agendas that are at play in our world at the moment, I would love to offer you to fight on an MVP undercard, to show the world your talents on a fair platform and not against a man,” he wrote.
Though the match further enflamed the culture war issue of women-identifying men competing against biological females in sports, there remains speculation about Khelif’s sex at birth.
On March 24, 2023, Khelif was disqualified by the International Boxing Association (IBA) from competing at the Women’s World Boxing Championships New Delhi as a result of the fighter’s “failure to meet the eligibility criteria for participating in the women’s competition,” per IBA regulations.
“Point to note, the athletes did not undergo a testosterone examination but were subject to a separate and recognized test, whereby the specifics remain confidential,” IBA said in a statement issued on Wednesday. “This test conclusively indicated that both athletes did not meet the required necessary eligibility criteria and were found to have competitive advantages over other female competitors.”
The statement said the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) “differing regulations on these matters, in which IBA is not involved, raise serious questions about both competitive fairness and athletes’ safety.”
A joint statement released by Paris 2024 Boxing Unite and IOC stated “every person has the right to practice sport without discrimination.”
The statement referred to “misleading information” being reported about Khelif, saying the fighter has been “competing in international boxing competitions for many years in the women’s category.” Joint Paris 2024 Boxing Unit/IOC Statementhttps://t.co/22yVzxFuLd pic.twitter.com/fZvgsW8OOi
— IOC MEDIA (@iocmedia) August 1, 2024
Sporting News reports that weeks after Khelif’s 2023 disqualification, “it emerged that Khelif was removed from the competition after drug tests confirmed high levels of testosterone.”
“Following this incident, IBA president Umar Kremlev stated that these results proved that Khelif and other female athletes with elevated levels of testosterone carried male chromosomes,” the outlet writes.
As a response, the Algeria Olympic Committee (COA) said, "COA strongly condemns the unethical targeting and maligning of our esteemed athlete, Imane Khelif, with baseless propaganda from certain foreign media outlets,” per BBC.
Though it appears Khelif has not publicly discussed their gender identity, in March of this year the fighter revealed that “she was unable to ask her father” for bus fare to train as a boxer because he “did not approve of boxing for girls,” according to UNICEF, where Khelif has a role as a national ambassador.
In a long X post that does not specifically mention Khelif, researcher and author Carole Hooven appeared to offer an alternate explanation to the questions surrounding the fighter’s biological make-up.
“Seems like a good time to re-post my older (now edited) post about athletes with XY DSDs (Disorder, or Difference of Sex Development),” she wrote. “Lots of graphs and detail about the relevant biology at the end.”
