Imane Khelif, the reigning gold medalist in Olympic women’s boxing, is, in fact, a man, a medical report obtained by Reduxx confirms. The findings highlight the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) willful failure to protect the safety of female Olympians and the integrity of the Paris Games.
Khelif entered the contest under a cloud of suspicion. The International Boxing Association (IBA) had disqualified him from women’s boxing a year earlier after two independent blood tests concluded he had XY chromosomes.
The IOC knew about these tests but declined to investigate or bar Khelif from competing. Instead, officials relied heavily on 2024 Olympic regulations identifying women solely by their female passports. Any questions about Khelif’s biology were quickly rebuffed or minimized.
“These boxers are entirely eligible,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams lectured, referring to Khelif and silver medalist Lu Yu-Ting, who also has XY chromosomes. “They are women on their passports. It’s not helpful to start stigmatizing like this. We all have a responsibility not to turn it into some kind of witch-hunt.”
IOC President Thomas Bach doubled down: “We are talking about women’s boxing. We have two boxers who were born as women, raised as women, who have passports as women and who have competed for many years as women. This is a clear definition of a woman.”
Bach later claimed, “There was never any doubt of [Khelif and Yu-Ting] being women.”
Bach is wrong on two counts. A woman is a human with XX chromosomes or, alternatively, a human designed to produce large gametes. Living as a woman or having a female passport does not make someone female.
The IBA blood tests also raised substantial doubts about Khelif’s biological sex. His opening bout against Italy’s Angela Carini only raised suspicions higher. If the IOC had investigated these claims, it might have discovered that Khelif had been diagnosed with a rare disorder of sexual development (DSD) in 2023 —one that absolutely excludes him from competing against women.
In August 2023, expert endocrinologists Souymaya Fedala and Jacques Young determined Khelif had 5-Alpha-Reductase deficiency, a developmental disorder that only affects males.
Infants with 5-alpha produce too little dihydrotestosterone, which causes them to be born with ambiguous genitalia. Doctors often mistake babies with 5-alpha for girls. But, importantly, this disorder does not stop the production or effect of testosterone. A person with 5-alpha will go through male puberty —which is when most find out their true sex.
5-alpha is a terrible, disorienting disorder. It also categorically disqualifies sufferers from participating in female sports. Fedala and Young’s analysis found Khelif had XY chromosomes, normal male levels of testosterone and male reproductive organs. That means he has the same chromosomal and hormonal advantages all men have over women athletically, including heavier bones, bulkier musclers, broader shoulder and larger hearts and lungs.
Khelif and his coaches received this diagnosis more than a year before his Olympic debut. He and his team decided to compete anyway, indulging in a televised display of violence made more shocking by its intentionality.
The IOC had all the information they needed to stop Khelif from participating. The barest hint of an investigation would have revealed the larger report released by Reduxx — Khelif’s coach had already alluded to it publicly.
Instead, the IOC gave Khelif a gold medal.
The whole debacle represents an egregious failure of the organization’s mission to “encourage and support the promotion of ethics and good governance in sport … and to dedicate its efforts to ensuring that, in sport, the spirit of fair play prevails, and violence is banned.”
Marshi Smith, co-founder of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, puts it this way as she spoke to Reduxx:
Smith continues:
First and foremost, the IOC must officially define what a woman is, rather than leaving it up to individual nations. Checking passports does nothing to determine a competitor’s biological advantage. IOC officials must find their courage to adhere to truth, instead of ideology.
On behalf of the female population, I hereby exhort the IOC to, well, grow a pair.
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