Imane Khelif's Olympic Victory Sparks Debate on Gender Identity in Sports

 Imane Khelif, who won the women’s welterweight Olympic boxing gold in 2024, recently gave an interview to a French daily where she spoke about having a gene related to the Y chromosome, which only exists in biological males. She however said her hormones and organs were female, she had been raised as a girl, and also took medication to bring testosterone levels down, removing any possible advantage.

Even though she had earlier not been allowed to participate in the World Championship by the International Boxing Association (IBA), the International Olympic Committee had then felt she fit the women’s category. Her easy victories to the title, an opponent saying that Khelif’s punching power was unlike any other woman boxer’s, all led to considerable debate. In that same Olympics, Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, another athlete who the IBA had disallowed for the World Champi­onship like Khelif, won the featherweight gold. The two victories spilled over to become a political issue.

At the time, transgen­der rights were among the biggest pedestals of wokeism. Even though the two athletes did not fit the definition of trans, their defenders came from that umbrella of activism. Since then, especially after the victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential elec­tions, wokeism has become steadily marginalised and, along with that, the virtue signalling by organisations. Khelif is keen on being in the next Olympics and professes to have no issue taking the tests required. Her participation, however, seems in doubt because the winds of tolerance have shifted. She has not boxed in any international tournament since her gold. Allowing her would bring the Olympics a level of pres­sure that it might not want to withstand.

Also, women athletes, the ones affected by the issue, are much more vocal now. Most people would be happy to address or relate with others in whatever identity they choose. To per­mit it in sports, however, comes with real-life consequences for women who have spent a lifetime honing a skill that biology overrode. Sport was the altar at which this particular aspect of wokeism got tested. It even had some initial success, but then the results were stark enough for an inevitable pullback.