IOC President Thomas Bach said 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 Saturday at the midway point of the Paris Games, where he wanted to draw a line under days of global scrutiny about the female boxers’ gender.
The simplest explanation is that they didn’t do any tests, and this whole kerfuffle is a very successful act of revenge on the IOC, Khelif, and the rest of the sports world.
The AP article linked above even points out that it was three days after she beat a previously undefeated Russian newcomer. By disqualifying Khelif after the fact they retroactively made the Russian boxers record “perfect” again. Now they’re just trying to cause more issues after being stripped of their international recognition a few years ago.
Honestly, these ex post facto disqualifications seem pretty fishy to me to begin with. Shouldn’t qualification happen before a match, not after the results have already been decided?
Totally, especially for something that the boxer has no control over. It’s clearly just a way for them to invalidate the results they don’t like.
I don’t think it matters either way. Until we’re told at the very least what the tests were or who administered them, any testing is irrelevant. They don’t even need to say what the results were. All they have to say is, “we did X test on them and Y doctor administered it and Z lab did the analysis.”
Did they test them? Who knows? Who cares until they give us the details?