The official at the centre of the Olympic boxing gender row was one of Sir Keir Starmer’s best men at his wedding. The Telegraph has more.
Mark Adams, the spokesman for the International Olympic Committee (IOC), has known the Prime Minister since the two men were at school together.
Mr. Adams expressed concerns earlier this week about a “witch hunt” against boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting, who have previously failed gender eligibility tests.
On Thursday the Italian boxer Angela Carini was forced to abandon a fight against Khelif at the games in Paris, claiming she had been hit so hard by her opponent that she feared for her life.
The IOC faced widespread condemnation for placing Carini, who had a suspected broken nose, in a position of danger.
Responding to Khelif’s victory on Thursday, Mr. Adams told reporters: “Testosterone is not a perfect test. Many women can have testosterone which is in what would be called ‘male levels’ and still be women, and still compete as a woman.
“So this panacea, this idea that you do one test for testosterone, that’s not the case I’m afraid. But each sport needs to deal with its issues, they know their sports and their disciplines the best and they need to target and tailor I should say the testing and so on.
“But I hope we’re all agreed we’re not calling for people to go back to the bad old days of sex testing, which was a terrible thing to do and I’m sure we all agree that’s not the way forward in this situation.”
He went on to insist “this is not a transgender issue” and criticise “misreporting” of the row, which has cast a shadow over the Paris Olympics.
Khelif and Yu-Ting were disqualified from the Women’s World Boxing Championships in March 2023 after failing gender tests. However, the IOC has different rules from the International Boxing Association. …
In 2014, Mr. Adams referred to Sir Keir as “my old mate” as he congratulated him on his selection as the Labour candidate for St. Pancras and Holborn at the 2015 general election.
“Over the moon that my old mate Keir Starmer has been selected… He’ll be a real campaigner for constituents,” he said.
When Sir Keir was subsequently elected on May 7th, Mr. Adams wrote: “Congrats to a great bloke.”
He was one of Sir Keir’s four best men.
Worth reading in full.
The details of Khelif’s intersex condition remain unclear. It appears she was raised as a girl (and is anatomically female). However, there has been no denial of (or appeal against) the IBA claim that she is genetically male (with XY chromosomes). WalesOnline explains the context:
Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting have been cleared to compete in the women’s boxing in Paris, having been disqualified from last year’s Women’s World Championships in India for failing to meet the IBA’s eligibility criteria.
Speaking last March to Russia’s Tass news agency, IBA President Umar Kremlev said Khelif and Yu-ting were “posing” as women ahead of the 2023 world championships.
“Based on DNA tests, we identified a number of athletes who tried to trick their colleagues [by] posing as women,” Kremlev said.
“According to the results of the tests, it was proved that they have XY chromosomes. Such athletes were excluded from competition.”
The relationship between the IBA and the IOC is strained to say the least, with the IBA having seized on the two boxers’ presence in Paris to criticise the IOC.
The IBA issued a statement this week in which it claimed both boxers did not have a “testosterone examination” in India last year but were “subject to a separate and recognised test”. The IBA said the test’s “specifics remain confidential,” refusing to explain or elaborate.
The IBA is controlled by President Kremlev, who is Russian. He brought in Russian state-owned Gazprom as its primary sponsor and moved much of the IBA’s operations to Russia.
The IBA disregarded IOC guidelines by allowing Russian fighters to compete at last year’s World Championships under the Russian flag, leading some countries – including Great Britain – to boycott the competition.
The governing body then disqualified Khelif only after the Algerian defeated Russian boxer Azalia Amineva during the tournament. …
The reason the 25-year-old can compete at the Olympics is because the IBA doesn’t run the boxing at the Games. It was stripped of that status last year after the IBA failed to meet set reforms following its 2019 suspension over governance issues and alleged corruption.
Boxing at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, in which Khelif also competed, was organised by the IOC amid concerns over the IBA’s finance, governance, ethics, refereeing and judging. A separate breakaway organisation – World Boxing – was formed after failing to oust Kremlev from power.
World Boxing hopes to take over the status of running boxing at the Olympic games in 2028.
Amy Broadhurst, who defeated Khelif at the 2022 Women’s World Championships, posted on social media:
Have a lot of people texting me over Imane Khelif. Personally I don’t think she has done anything to ‘cheat’. I thinks it’s the way she was born and that’s out of her control. The fact that she has been beaten by nine females before says it all.
It’s notable, however, that Khelif has not been defeated since 2022. Whether or not her condition is within her “control” is not of course relevant to questions of fairness, safety and eligibility in women’s sport.
What is surely clear is that the IOC needs to come up with transparent rules that are widely regarded as fair for women competing against one another. Intersex conditions and disorders of sexual development will undoubtedly present the most difficult cases, particularly where you have people who are, say, anatomically female and raised as such but with male genetics and testosterone levels. But if women’s sport is to be fair, safe and credible it has to be protected from male-bodied competitors – and that will include taking some difficult decisions affecting those with intersex conditions.
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