dpa
Paris
Italian boxer Angela Carini quit her Olympic bout with Algeria’s Imane Khelif after only 46 seconds because the punches from an opponent who previously failed a gender test were too hard.
"I couldn’t carry on. I have a big pain in my nose and I said, ‘Stop’. It’s better to avoid keeping going. My nose started dripping from the first hit,” Carini said after the 66kg fight on Thursday.
"It could be the match of my life but, in that moment, I had to safeguard my life, too.”
Khelif was disqualified from the 2023 women’s world championships in New Delhi after they effectively failed a gender test.
But Khelif is able to fight at the Paris Games, as she did in Tokyo three years ago, because Olympic boxing is run by a different body.
The International Boxing Association (IBA), formerly the AIBA, was in charge of the world championships but is no longer recognized by the International Olympic Committee due to governance issues.
IOC views Khelif as a woman. The IOC says Khelif is listed as a woman on her passport and fulfils the eligibility requirements.
IOC spokesman Mark Adams also made the point that Khelif had lost against other women over the years.
Discussing a separate issue at the daily IOC news conference, comments from the head of the IOC’s Safe Sport Unit Kirsty Burrows raised eyebrows among journalists given the boxing furore.
"When we talk about safe sport, we’re referring to physically and psychologically safe athletic environments, so both mental health and safeguarding,” she said.
The Algerian Olympic Committee condemned the criticism of Khelif.
"These attempts at defamation based on lies are completely unfair, especially at a crucial moment. We are all behind you, Imane. The whole nation is behind you and is proud of your achievements.”
Other cases at this Olympics and before Lin Yu-ting from Taiwan, which the IOC calls Chinese Taipei, also failed a gender test at the 2023 worlds and was stripped of bronze.
Significant media coverage of the issue has been damning against the IOC, and former tennis great Martina Navratilova said on X after Thursday’s bout: "Deplorable. This will not end well for the people in power who allowed this to happen.”
The IBA said in a statement late on Wednesday that the controversial boxers should never have been at the Olympics. Its decision to throw them out of the 2023 worlds was about fairness, it said.
"This decision, made after a meticulous review, was extremely important and necessary to uphold the level of fairness and utmost integrity of the competition,” the statement said.