Australia’s trailblazing boxer Tina Rahimi has demanded “proper evidence” from the governing body and holds fears for the mental health of the two competing boxers caught up in an eligibility storm.
The first female Muslim to box for Australia at the Olympics was bundled out of the 57kg division of the Paris Games on Friday night, spoiling any chance of meeting Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, on the other side of the draw.
Lin and fellow women’s boxer Imane Khelif of Algeria were disqualified from the world championships held last year by the International Boxing Association (IBA) for supposedly failing unspecified gender eligibility tests.
Lin’s and Khelif’s passports say they are female and they have no eligibility issues with the International Olympic Committee, which runs the Olympic boxing tournament in the absence of IBA, banished due to integrity concerns.
The pair’s presence at the Paris Olympics has become a divisive international issue and been felt by Rahimi.
“Where the evidence is for that?,” she said of the IBA’s gender eligibility ban.
“Obviously men should be participating in men’s sport and women should be participating in women’s sport and I think there’s just been a lot of talk, but there’s no proper evidence that has been provided.
“Until there’s proper facts then people shouldn’t be really talking about it.
“It’s a really massive toll on people’s mental health and going into a major event like this I think it’s really unnecessary unless there’s proper facts to prove that that is the case.”
Lin, who like Khelif competed at Tokyo’s Games, won her opening Olympic boxing bout on Friday, beating Sitora Turdibekova of Uzbekistan 5-0 and received a hearty cheer from the French crowd.
Lin bowed to the crowd before leaving the ring. On her walk back to the dressing room, she stopped and waved at her cheering fan section, touching her hand to her heart, hugged some of her supporters and didn’t speak to media.
The two-time world champion will face Svetlana Staneva of Bulgaria in the quarter-finals on Sunday, with the winner clinching her first Olympic medal.
Staneva is a 34-year-old amateur boxing veteran who lost a close fight to Lin at the 2023 world championships in India.
The victory was changed to a no-contest by the IBA, which claimed Lin had failed an unspecified gender test.
The IBA has been out of the Olympic movement since 2019 after years of concerns with its governance, financial transparency and administration of competitions.
Lin is the top seed in the women’s 57-kilogram category in Paris, although Olympic seeding is frequently not indicative of a boxer’s medal chances.
The IBA also disqualified Khelif from last year’s world championships for what it said were elevated levels of testosterone.
The IOC has repeatedly condemned the growing criticism of Lin and Khelif, who won her own first bout on Thursday when opponent Angela Carini of Italy quit after 46 seconds, citing pain in her nose following a few exchanges of punches.
Lin has competed in elite-level amateur boxing for 10 years, and Khelif is a six-year veteran. Neither had been sanctioned before last year’s worlds.
“I don’t know anything, I’m just an athlete,” Rahimi said.
“But I was just thinking if that was to happen to me, and the media was talking about me and there was no evidence …
“I definitely don’t believe that XY chromosome athletes should be participating in a women’s sport, I definitely don’t agree with that.
“But at the same time we need proof, we need evidence before there’s all this, talk.
“They’re human at the end of the day.”
Rahimi also took a stand for her religion, proudly wearing a hijab under her headgear and declared it was “discrimination” from the host nation for barring their athletes from doing the same.
With AP
