IOC leader says 'hate speech' directed at Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting at Olympics is unacceptable

Algeria's Imane Khelif, right, walks beside Italy's Angela Carini after their women's 66kg preliminary boxing match at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/John Locher)

PARIS, France — IOC President Thomas Bach said Saturday the “hate speech” directed at boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting at the Paris Olympics is “totally unacceptable.”

“We will not take part in a politically motivated … cultural war,” Bach said at a news briefing at the midway point of the games, that also tried to draw a line under days of global scrutiny about the female boxers' gender.

“What is going on in this context in the social media with all this hate speech, with this aggression and abuse, and fueled by this agenda, is totally unacceptable,” the International Olympic Committee leader said.

Khelif of Algeria and Lin of Taiwan have been the focus of intense attention — and often inaccurate commentary — because both were disqualified at the 2023 world championships.

The Russian-led International Boxing Association — which has been banished from the Olympics by the IOC in a yearslong dispute — removed the boxers from the worlds 16 months ago in India citing gender-based tests that are still unspecified and unproven.

p> The women's boxing issue was linked by Bach to what he called a wider, Russian-led campaign against the IOC and Paris Olympics where only 15 Russian athletes are competing, and as neutrals without their national identity. The IOC and international sports bodies have isolated Russia during the military invasion of Ukraine.

“What we have seen from the Russian side and in particular from the (IBA)," Bach said, "they have undertaken already way before these Games with a defamation campaign against France, against the games, against the IOC.”

The Algerian Olympic and Sports Committee filed an official complaint with the IOC to protest the online harassment of Khelif that amounts to “a serious violation of sports ethics and the Olympic Charter by one of the participants in the boxing tournament” at the Paris Olympics, according to a statement that was posted on the committee’s Facebook page.

The statement did not name the boxer who has allegedly posted disparaging comments of the Algerian, but warned that the IOC “has issued a final warning to delete every post that concerns our heroine Iman Khalif.”

“We reserve the right to prosecute everyone who participated in the heinous campaign against our heroine Imane Khelif,” the statement said.

Both Khelif and Lin, who is a two-time world champion, competed at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and did not win medals.

“We have two boxers who are born as women, who have been raised as women, who have a passport as a woman and have competed for many years as women,” Bach said. “Some want to own a definition of who is a women.”

The IBA fueled tensions late Friday saying it would to pay US$100,000 — its promised prize for each Olympic gold medalist in Paris — to the Italian boxer who stopped fighting against Khelif in the first minute of their bout Thursday.

“Everybody in our world apparently feels obliged to say everything to anything without really considering the sometimes very complex circumstances,” Bach said. "You will not come to a proper decision if you organize a poll in the social media ‘Do you think this person is a woman or is not a woman?’"

Boxing is the only sport at the Paris Games not being run by a dedicated world governing body.

The tournaments are being organized by an IOC-appointed sports unit, as they were three years ago in Tokyo, because of Olympic leaders' rift with the IBA over governance and integrity concerns, plus financial dependence on Russian state energy firm Gazprom.

It has all combined to leave boxing in Paris being run by a rule book largely unchanged since the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics — a period when governing bodies for track and field, swimming and cycling have reviewed and updated their eligibility rules addressing gender issues.

Bach challenged critics of Olympic women's boxing “to come up with a scientific-based new definition of who is a women, and how can somebody being born, raised and competed and having a passport as a woman cannot be considered a woman.”

Associated Press writer Barbara Surk in Nice, France, contributed.