Imane Khelif is NOT a biological woman – watching her beat her female opponent in the boxing ring was a sickening sight
IT was a sickening, heart-rending sight.
Just half a minute into her Olympic bout against an Algerian boxer, Italy’s Angela Carini was punched so hard in the face that she quit the fight.
Later, she wept in front of the cameras as she revealed that she was in such pain from the blow that she feared for her life if she had carried on.
Normally, such a dramatic early win would lead to the triumphant boxer, Imane Khelif, being cheered by the crowd and hugged by her vanquished opponent.
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But this was very different.
The crowd was very muted, with some booing, and Carini could be heard muttering ‘It’s not right!’ as the referee raised Khelif’s arm, before she turned her back and walked away as Khelif tried to embrace her, and the distraught loser then burst into tears.
The reason for Carini’s distress was soon made clear: Imane Khelif is not a biological woman.
She was banned by the International Boxing Association from competing in the last Women’s World Championships for failing tests to meet the ‘eligibility criteria’ for participating in women’s competition.
In other words, the IBA concluded she’s not a woman and its president, Umar Kremlev, confirmed to the Russian news agency TASS it had ‘been proven’ that Khelif has XY chromosomes unlike women who have XX chromosomes.
This is a more complicated case than the barrage of shameful transgender scandals which have engulfed women’s sport in recent years.
Khelif reportedly has a condition called Swyer Syndrome which means she has some female reproductive organs but also much higher levels of testosterone than women.
As a result, she has a superior physicality to females, which can be seen by her tall, powerful frame.
In other words, she has an unfair advantage.
And that’s why there’s been such a furious response, led by JK Rowling, Elon Musk, and Martina Navratilova, to the footage of Carini quitting after being smashed in the face.
Nobody can say I didn’t warn them this might happen.
Four years ago, when I was still a morning TV presenter, I asked Lisa Nandy, Britain’s new Minister for Culture, Media and Sport Lisa, a simple question.
Would she be happy, I said, for Usain Bolt or Floyd Mayweather, if they decided to self-identify as women, to compete in the Olympics against actual women?
When she obfuscated, and tried to avoid answering the question by saying there should be ‘a commission in sport’ to determine such matters, I responded:
‘You don’t need a commission to work out whether it’s right or fair for Floyd Mayweather to identify as a woman and then fight women boxers. It’s just common sense.’
Not fair or equal
At which point, Nandy went on the offensive, and spent ten minutes accusing me of being a straw man, talking nonsense, being outrageous, creating more heat than light, pitting one group of people against another, and attacking trans people.
Blah blah blah.
This kind of ludicrous reaction is the default position of any politician when they don’t want to answer a question, and especially for Labour politicians around trans issues because they’re all so terrified of offending the woke brigade among their voter-base.
But Nandy’s refusal to give me a simple answer to a simple question, albeit one with enormous repercussions, was very telling, and frankly, very concerning given she’s now Minister for Sport in this country.
The obvious, indisputable, medical, and scientific, truth is that someone born with male biology of any kind has an obvious physical advantage over biological females.
That’s why we keep the sexes apart in the Olympics.
Otherwise, women would barely win a single medal.
To pretend otherwise is to be either utterly deluded or wilfully dishonest.
I believe, as former, and possibly the next, US president, Donald Trump, said earlier this week, that all trans women athletes should be banned from competing in women’s sport.
Not because I’m transphobic; I’ve always very publicly supported trans people’s rights to the same fairness and equality the rest of us enjoy.
No, it’s because it’s just not fair or equal.
And the same applies to athletes born with XY chromosomes which also give them a physiological advantage over biological females.
This doesn’t mean I think they should be banned from elite sport altogether.
That would be discriminatory.
What happened in that Olympic boxing ring cannot be allowed to happen again
Instead, they should either compete against men, as most have done in the past, or in a new open category.
But what happened in that Olympic boxing ring cannot be allowed to happen again, otherwise the spirit and integrity of the Games will be tarnished irrevocably.
As Italy’s Prime Minister, Georgia Meloni, said in support of Carini:
‘From my point of view, this was not an equal competition. I think that athletes who have male genetic characteristics should not participate in women’s competitions.
‘Not because we want to discriminate against anyone, but to protect the rights of female athletes to compete on equal terms. We have to pay attention, in an attempt to not discriminate, that we’re actually discriminating.’
She’s right. And we all know she’s right.
