The extraordinary scrutiny of Imane Khelif

Before Imane Khelif confounded the critics and won gold, Steve Bunce discussed the ongoing turmoil.

THE guilty and the innocent in all sports deserve a fair hearing. Imane Khelif has not had a fair hearing at the boxing in Paris. The Algerian boxer in the under-66 kilo class has been globally condemned and is at the very centre of a political story, surrounded in frenzy and ignorance and bias and unknowns.

It is hard to separate the truth from the hysteria and so much of the so-called truth is based on things that might never have happened. It is like something from the Cold War. The pursuit of Khelif by the IBA, the disgraced organisation that once ran boxing, and the weak defence of
the boxer by the IOC have combined to make an incendiary cesspit of hate and shame. I have had death threats, and we can only imagine the torture Khelif is having to endure.

Here is the history and it is not easy reading. You see, every piece of this sickening jigsaw is dependent on believing in the IBA’s assertions; put simply, I don’t and why should I? Unlike the thousands of new experts, all determined to ruin Khelif ’s life, I have been at IBA tournaments in Budapest, Houston, Plovdiv, Antalya, Belfast and, obviously, the Rio Olympics. I have been an eyewitness to coups, threats and some of sport’s most outrageous decisions. And, you guessed it, every decision, so the IBA claim, was taken with the interests of the sport at heart. Try telling that to Michael Conlan. 

During the last seven chaotic years I have monitored closely their decline and fall, watched as they took the sport to the very edge of oblivion. And yet, amazingly, they release a few press statements making claims about Khelif ’s gender and they suddenly become the truth bearers, the men with the interests of the sport at their very core! It is barely credible and a staggering change. And it would be comic if the fall-out had not
developed into a nasty and potentially deadly standoff.

It has been difficult to keep up with the changes in the IBA’s statements, the amendments, the new wording. There was bold talk of testosterone levels about two weeks ago, then it was said there was one test and suddenly there were two tests and then a denial that a testosterone test was ever taken. The words “gender test” and “sex test” were thrown about like compliments at a wedding and somehow, in this crazy cauldron of the Olympic circus, all the lunacy stuck and Khelif was condemned.

Then, at the very start of this week, the head of the IBA, Umar Kremlev, went back to talking about testosterone levels during a chaotic and hastily convened press conference in Paris. At the conference, which was packed with contradictions, Kremlev called the IOC’s Thomas Bach,
“the chief sodomite”. It has, as I said, been hard to keep up. We have been told by the IBA that the results were “inconclusive” both times (I have that on tape) and are also confidential, the people carrying out the results were “trustworthy”, and that all the IBA wants is the integrity of the sport to remain unharmed.

It seemed for about five days like the world had consumed the IBA’s word as gospel. I was a “sicko” for doubting, in the pocket of the IOC, a misogynist, a wife-beating beast. Wow, it was endless. I’m just a boxing writer/broadcaster and expert on the IBA. It started to change when Khelif ’s life was explored, her Algerian village life, the ten-kilometre walks to the gym to save on bus fare, her hero status, pictures of her as a little girl, her role as UNICEF ambassador and then the pain on her face each time she appeared near the Paris ring. The pain and the tears.

The men – mostly white men – who had attacked her on the IBA’s evidence alone, even started to doubt their assaults; papers backtracked, found somebody on the desk to write an alternative piece. Some outlets stopped calling her a man. I’m not going to name the voices of reason
who reached out to me in support of Khelif and I’m not going to name the shameless list who piled in because it was, according to them, obvious that Khelif is “a geezer”.

And that is, I believe, at the very heart of this atrocity – the way Khelif looks. Think about that for a second: I’m ashamed to even know people who would condemn a person because of how they look.

It is not over yet for Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting, the other athlete named by the IBA. However, I hope this column has corrected some of the prejudices and exposed some of the errors. The IBA, who were finally excluded last summer from running the Olympics, will continue their war, to discredit Olympic boxing, a jewel they once ran for decades. 

Hopefully, we have a spot in LA in 2028 and the IOC can use World Boxing as their partner. World Boxing will then have the power and need to find a way to satisfy everybody involved that fights are fair. The IOC does not rule on gender issues, it is the job of the recognised governing body. The clarity and sanity needed will have come far too late to spare Khelif and Lin the ordeal of Paris.