“A vote for Kamala is a vote against your daughter’s future.” Riley Gaines is the name of the woman who criticized the Democratic presidential candidate and vice president with the surname Harris on the right-wing American TV channel Fox News. And it was all about boxing somewhere in Europe. Screenshot from Fox News’ Instagram account on August 3, 2024 at 07.02 shows Riley Gaines holding an appeal in the US presidential election campaign. Photo: Fox News/ Instagram It was not the first time Gaines had included US presidential candidates in this type of debate. But we can come back to that. A few hours later, anyway, the North Paris Arena in Paris is boiling already in the early afternoon, for a women’s preliminary round boxing match between a Taiwanese and an Uzbek. The press places were first filled. For the second day in a row. Because, as news also portrayed on Thursday, the boxing ring is the center for all the strongest opinions in the French capital right now. When Olympic boxing became big politics, the federation that previously governed amateur boxing alone, the IBA, refused Algerian Imane Khelif and Lin Yu Ting from Taiwan to box in their World Cup last year. In the women’s class. Because they should have been revealed as men in tests ahead of the championship. No outsiders have so far gained access to the test results. So the participation of the two boxers is therefore without any clear facts as a basis. Be it what kind of tests have been done, levels of testosterone or what kind of biological profile should have been uncovered. In the Olympics, boxers are welcome anyway. And that creates a very engaged debate. It was after Italian Angela Carini retired after just 46 seconds in her first and only Olympic match against Khelif that the debate turned into big politics. CRUSHED: Angela Carini’s Olympic dream lasted 46 seconds. Photo: Reuters There is something fundamentally undignified about the whole discussion surrounding the two female boxers. But it is very real. And it enters into a larger discussion about the future of all sports. Because sport is still unable to find satisfactory solutions on how to relate to athletes who challenge our traditional two-gender world structure. Maybe because it’s not possible. The IBA continues to criticize the decision to allow the two boxers to compete. It must be mentioned that the federation is governed by a Russian president who is in sharp conflict with the IOC. They were stripped of responsibility for Olympic qualification before the 2016 Olympics, and are doing everything to create noise around boxing in the Olympics. Like when they promised on Friday that Carini will get an Olympic bonus of around one million kroner as if she had won the entire tournament. Even though she boxed for only 46 seconds. And at the same time, the IOC continues to defend the decision, day after day after day. And Kamala Harris has not yet commented on it. Which she obviously should. Because there are forces in the US that use all the debates about the gender classes in sports politically. The most active of these is the aforementioned Riley Gaines. She is a former swimmer and early on used her alleged victim role to gain attention. The crusade against Lia Thomas The case in question is the most talked about and debated about trans people’s right to participate in sports. Swimmer Lia Thomas was born a boy, but went through gender reassignment treatment after she finished her male puberty. One year after those hormone treatments were finished, she was eligible to compete in the 2022 US College Championships – as a woman. RUN: Swimmer Lia Thomas was allowed to participate in the American college championships in 2022. Afterwards, one of the competitors got involved in politics. Photo: AP Lia won. But the price was high. Because she started a debate that became extremely loud and aggressive. Including that one of her competitors, Riley Gaines, turned it into something that can only be called a crusade. PROTESTS: Riley Gaines has gotten involved in politics after she lost to Lia Thomas in the college championship. Photo: AP On the team, she got none other than a former president named Donald Trump. Who supported “real women” in their fight for justice in sport. On behalf of women in sport, they therefore wanted to ban Lia Thomas and others who had undergone gender reassignment after going through puberty as a man. And received support from the international swimming federation, World Aquatics, which banned transgender people from participating in the women’s class. Lia Thomas refused to give up the fight for what she believed to be her basic human right and took the case to the highest court of sport, CAS. The verdict came in June this year. Lia lost. And the Olympic dream was in practice crushed for her and others in the same situation. World Aquatics also expressed open relief, and believed they had tried to safeguard both the consideration of fair competition and that of the individual athlete’s right to compete as they wish. The latest by introducing a third, open class – intended for athletes like Lia Thomas. Which they put on the program in one of their World Cup events. The competitions were cancelled. No one had signed up. The historical trans person In the Olympics there are only two classes. Therefore, the IOC has largely opened the way for trans people to participate, if the individual confederation allows it. In addition to swimming, athletics, among others, has said no. While others have been more liberal. That is why, after much debate, Laurel Hubbard from New Zealand was allowed to participate in weightlifting in Tokyo three years ago. Hubbard exited the competition after three unsuccessful thrusts. SMOKE OUT: Laurel Hubbard during the Tokyo Olympics. Photo: AP Some speculated whether it was deliberate to release even more noise. This time it is not about trans people. No one is there. Which is seen by many as a kind of victory. Remember the pass The claims against the controversial boxers are not a trans debate, even if many misunderstand it as such. Instead, it is about the fact that they are actually men. Because a dysfunctional international boxing federation in open conflict with the Olympic organizers claims so. And repeats his views in several press releases. Where they state that tests have shown that the boxers have XY chromosomes, which usually means they are male. And have denied them participation in their own WC. Everyone wants a fair sport. It is not the one whose biological men compete in the women’s class. But we must not forget that no documentation has been presented here. – The two boxers were born and grew up as women. They have passports as women, and they have competed for many years as women. That is the clear definition of a woman, says IOC President Thomas Bach before adding: – We do not want to be part of a politically motivated culture war. And it is actually possible to have sympathy for the IOC’s line. Gender testing was discontinued in connection with the Olympics in 1999, after it was considered both inaccurate and unethical. An even and good boxing match The horror of the hard blows of Algerian Khelif is not enough either. Although it’s easy to feel for Italy’s Carini, who had her Olympic dreams dashed in less than a minute. Or that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni thinks it is unfair. Nor is it enough that Taiwan’s Yu-ting won with unanimous judge support over Uzbekistan’s Sitora Turdibekova. TOUGH: Lin Yu-ting meets Uzbekistan’s Sitora Turdibekova. In one match Yu-ting won 5–0. Photo: AP news’s boxing expert Anders Werner Øfsti watched the fight from the back and concluded that it was primarily even, with good technical and tactical boxing from both athletes. EXPERT: Anders Øfsti. Photo: Morten Andersen / news “I do not react to any particular advantage in power and strength”. But the reactions are strong anyway. Even after an even match that ran out of time. Neither of the two boxers made it to the mandatory round to meet the press at the end of the fight. And the other boxers in the same class were very reserved with what they said. Irish Michaela Walsh, who could face first-seeded Yu-ting in the next round, was also not very keen to talk about the competitor from Taiwan, but rather about the boxers’ general safety when she met news after her fight, which she lost. LOST: Michaela Walsh would rather talk about the safety of the boxers. Photo: news “Safety is the most important thing. In this case, no one has all the facts. We have to have that before we can know what’s going on.” Olympic boxing’s last seconds? The aforementioned IBA and IOC have long been in conflict. So controversial is boxing and its management that the sport may be out of the Olympic program in Los Angeles in 2028. In a host nation that may then have Kamala Harris as president. Unless her failure to make statements about how devastating the participation of two boxers with alleged male DNA ends up ruining her chances, as Riley Gaines hopes. “I will keep men out of women’s sports!”, wrote instead the Republican presidential candidate, mentioned Donald Trump, on his own social medium, Truth Social, So while Gaines, her friend Trump and the rest of the United States are waiting for what Kamala Harris says about case, others are trying to focus on Olympic boxing – perhaps for the very last time. Two of the medal candidates are named Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting. They compete in the 66 and 57 kg classes respectively. For women. Listen to Oppdatert’s episode about the gender conflict before the Olympics. Published 03.08.2024, at 15.29
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The Olympic gender imbalance – Paris 2024 Olympics
