In the wake of new International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Kirsty Coventry calling for the women’s sporting category to be protected, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who came under fire during the Paris 2024 Olympics over the athlete’s biological sex, has fired back.
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts," Khelif wrote in an Instagram Story post on Monday. The quote is commonly attributed to Winston Churchill.
On Thursday, Coventry said that she has "overwhelming support" to protect women’s sports in the Olympics. "We understand that there'll be differences depending on the sport … but it was very clear from the members that we have to protect the female category, first and foremost to ensure fairness," she said, per Fox News.
"But we need to do that with a scientific approach and the inclusion of the international federations who have already done a lot of work in this area."
She said that there was "unanimous" support for reaching an agreement on how to amend current policies regarding transgender athletes, and suggested that the IOC may take a page from World Athletics’ policy, which blocks biological men from competing in women’s divisions if they went through male puberty.
"It was very clear from the membership the discussion around this has to be done with medical and scientific research at the core, so we are looking at the facts and the nuances and the inclusion of the international federations that have done so much of this work … having a seat at the table and sharing with us because every sport is different," Coventry said. "But it was pretty much unanimously felt that the IOC should take a leading role in bringing everyone together to try and find a broad consensus."
She said that changes would likely not result in retroactive changes to the results of past competitions. Imane Khelif, as well as Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting, came under fire for previously failing gender eligibility testing in another tournament. Both boxers won gold in their weight classes.
One medical report on Khelif revealed that Khelif has a disorder of sex development only found in biological males, has XY chromosomes, and has a testosterone level that is typically seen in males. Another report from the 2023 International Boxing Association (IBA) Championships found that a chromosome analysis of Khelif "reveals Male Karyotype."
