Boxer with male chromosomes defeats woman boxer in 46-second Olympic fight

Algeria’s Imane Khelif (in red) punches Italy’s Angela Carini in the women’s 66kg preliminaries round of 16 boxing match during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the North Paris Arena in Villepinte on Aug. 1, 2024. / Credit: MOHD RASFAN/AFP via Getty Images

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 1, 2024 / 16:46 pm (CNA).

An Algerian boxer with male chromosomes defeated an Italian woman boxer in an Olympics boxing match on Thursday after landing a devastating punch to the woman’s face in the brief 46-second fight.

The winning boxer — Imane Khelif — has XY chromosomes, according to a 2023 International Boxing Association eligibility test that got the boxer disqualified from the World Championships that year. 

Typically, men have XY chromosomes and women have XX chromosomes, but a person born with a sexual development disorder can sometimes have both male and female sexual characteristics, such as someone born with Swyer syndrome having XY chromosomes and female genitalia.

Khelif has never publicly identified as transgender and has not disclosed any sexual development disorders, so the reason for the test result is unclear. Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting, who was also disqualified from the 2023 World Championships for tests showing XY chromosomes, will also compete against women in the 2024 Olympics.

Both Khelif and Lin competed in the 2020 Olympics as well, prior to the release of those tests.

Angela Carini, who lost the fight to Khelif, left the boxing ring in tears and refused to shake Khelif’s hand. While still in the ring, she reportedly yelled “this is unjust,” according to the New York Post.

In a post-fight interview, Carini said she had “never been hit so hard in my life,” according to the Post. According to Yahoo Sports, she apologized to her country after the game for only lasting 46 seconds into the fight. 

“I had entered the ring to fight,” Carini said, according to Yahoo. “I didn’t give up, but a punch hurt too much and so I said enough. I go out with my head held high.”

The article also reported that Carini’s coach, Emanuel Renzini, said postgame that many people discouraged her from competing in the fight, telling her: “Don’t go, don’t go, please. She’s a man. It’s dangerous for you.”

Mary Rice Hasson, the director of the Person and Identity Project at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, told CNA that a sexual development disorder “does not make someone ‘not male’” and that “genetics don’t lie.”

“The [International Olympic Committee’s] decision to permit males who self-identify as ‘women’ to participate in women’s sports — particularly a physically brutal sport like boxing — is unconscionable,” Hasson said. “The female Italian boxer stopped the match because she felt her life was in danger, after being pummeled by the male Algerian boxer for less than a minute.”

Hasson said the situation “exposes, on the world stage, the ludicrous nature of the ‘transgender’ charade” and added that “males and females are biologically different, from conception, and sex cannot change.” She said the committee’s “wokeness” violates “the true Olympic spirit of fair competition [and] … degrades and endangers female competitors.”

Former swimmer Riley Gaines — who competed against the biologically male transgender swimmer Lia Thomas in college — said in a post on X that the Olympic fight “is glorified male violence against women.”

“Call me crazy, but it’s almost as if women don’t want to be punched in the face by a male as the world watches and applauds,” Gaines said.

Khelif’s next Olympic match is scheduled for Saturday against Hungarian boxer Luca Anna Hamori. Lin’s first match is scheduled for Friday against Uzbekistani boxer Sitora Turdibekova.