Monday, August 05, 2024
The WAAR Room: Olympic Boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting, and the Ongoing Plight of Female Athletes
The controversy was fueled by the Russian-led and -financed International Boxing Association (IBA), which disqualified both Khelif and Lin at the world championships they held last year. At the time they only gave a murky reason for doing so. Since last June, IBA had its recognition withdrawn as the Olympic boxing federation by the IOC because of a history of bad governance, lack of financial transparency, and corrupt judging and refereeing. IBA was first suspended by the IOC in 2019. The IOC directly organized the boxing competition at both the Tokyo and Paris Olympics through its own task force.
The charges against Khelif and Lin by the IBA are that they were shown to have XY chromosomes, which mainly but not exclusively exist in males. Yet the specifics of this test have not been revealed by the disgraced IBA, and have been dismissed by the IOC as "not legitimate", which has also confirmed that these two boxers are indeed both female. The IOC used the eligibility rules of the Rio and Tokyo Olympics for Paris, under which both Khelif and Lin qualified. In fact, both Khelif and Lin have been fighting in international amateur competition for many years. They also both fought at the Tokyo Olympics, although neither won a medal there.
We thus discussed the many aspects of this situation, including how Russia is using this situation to try to disrupt the Paris Olympics and to spread anti-LGBTQ propaganda, how the two fighters have faced an onslaught of lies and misinformation including that they are both "men" and "transgender", why the IBA's test of them is not legitimate, how this controversy adversely affects all women athletes, how legitimate questions about women and gender including eligibility in sports have been obscured by all the hate and lies, and much, much more.
You can watch The WAAR Room at https://youtu.be/bONVwyBTe30
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This show was recorded August 4, 2024.
Labels: boxing, Chris Baldwin, Eddie Goldman, IBA, Imane Khelif, IOC, Lin Yu-ting, Malissa Smith, No Holds Barred, Olympic boxing, Paris Olympics, Russia, Umar Kremlev, WAAR Room, women's boxing
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