A gold-medal Olympic boxer who failed gender testing to determine their sex recently came in third place in the Associated Press’s Female Athlete of the Year award. Out of the 35 votes, that were supposed to be cast toward women, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif received four, placing behind Simone Biles, who came in second place, and Caitlin Clark, who ultimately won the award.
The AP received backlash on social media for even entertaining the idea in the first place. One person posted on X, “Shame on @AP for voting 3rd Place in the AP Female Athlete of the Year to a MAN! You only need to watch the video below to know that Imane Khelif not only cannot pass a gender test but he is regarded as a male by the men of his culture. What a travesty.”
Similarly, Conservative commentator Paul A. Szypula said, “Imane Khelif just received 3rd place in AP’s Female Athlete of the Year voting. Khelif still has XY chromosomes. These are facts.” Others led calls to continue fighting to protect women’s sports as gender norms become increasingly blurred in current state of modernity.
Notably, the International Boxing Association (IBA) had previously indicated that Khelif had undergone gender tests that determined the boxer to be a biological male. IBA CEO Chris Roberts claimed the gender test “demonstrated the chromosomes we refer to in competition rules that make both boxers ineligible.” Regardless, the International Olympic Committee permitted Imane Khelif to compete against biological women.
The Tribune previously reported on comments from former Chair of the IBA Medical Committee, Dr. Ioannis Filippatos, who spoke to reporters, maintaining that basic biology cannot be argued against. “Medicine is knowledge, it is not opinion,” Filippatos firmly said. “One passport can give to us the opportunity to be men, and, tomorrow when I go back to Athens, it’s possible to go to my government and … change my name from Ioannis Filippatos to Ionnia Filippatos. That means I am a woman tomorrow? Please. The nature and the biological world do not change.”
As he continued speaking to the press, he was met with fierce opposition for his statements. “Why are you attack me?” the doctor repeatedly asked. Refusing to cave in from the backlash from the reporters, Dr. Filippatos maintained that science is science, explaining that the blood test results indicated the fighter was a biological male. “The blood results look and say — the laboratories — that this boxer is male,” he said.
Despite the findings from the IBA, the Olympics allowed Khelif to compete against women. “These athletes have been competing in senior competitions for six years with no issues,” IOC spokesperson Mark Adams stated. “These women were eligible for this contest, remain eligible for this contest and compete in this contest.”
Adams continued, “I cannot tell you if they were credible or not credible [gender tests] because the source from which they came was not credible and the basis for the tests was not credible. For that reason there was no consideration of whether they were correct or not correct because they had no bearing for the eligibility of boxing here.”
Watch Dr. Ioannis Filippatos fend off reporters below:
Featured image credit: By ALGÉRIE PRESSE SERVICE | وكالة الأنباء الجزائرية, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=134461048
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