The Swedish-Australian boxer Anja Stridsman said that the attacks against Algerian boxer Imane Khelifwho was asked about his gender during his participation in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, They are “ignorant” and stupid.
Khelif was at the center of intense controversy after the fight with Italian Angela Carini, who refused to continue the fight with the Algerian after only 46 seconds in the ring, fueled by a misinformation campaign about the gender of her rival who was labeled a “transgender athlete.”
Amidst this controversy, Stridsman- who won the gold medal in the 60 kilogram category at the 2018 Commonwealth Games and He is one of the nine athletes in the world who managed to defeat the Algerian boxer in the ring.– He considered neither Khelif’s physical appearance nor his beatings to be important.
Stridsman recalled in a report broadcast on Thursday night by the Australian public channel ABC, that shortly before facing Khelif in 2019, people told him that his Algerian rival: “He looks like a man!” or “You’re fighting a man.”
“I think (these kind of opinions) are quite ignorant and stupid“, the 37-year-old Swedish-Australian athlete said on the 7:30 program.
Stridsman also said that back then Khelif, who debuted in 2018, didn’t impress him too much because it seemed to him that his rival “wasn’t using his reach” or “that he didn’t have a good jab.”
Five years after his loss to Stridsman, The 25-year-old Algerian boxer will fight for gold with Chinese Liu Yangin a duel this coming Friday.
Khelif has been the subject of a campaign against his participation in the Games by the International Boxing Association (IBA), a body disqualified by the IOC for its irregularities.
Algerian and Taiwanese Lin Yu-ting, who have competed without incident throughout their careers in dozens of women’s competitions, including the 2020 Tokyo Games, have been suspended by the IBA from the 2023 world championships.
The IBA, which alleged that the two athletes failed gender eligibility tests, states that Khelif has XY chromosomes and higher levels of testosterone than normal for women.
The IOC protects women boxers by noting that they are born, raised and compete as women and have women’s passports.
Source: La Verdad
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