A gender row involving Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting and Algeria’s Imane Khelif at the Paris Olympics last year was the result of a Russian disinformation campaign and had little to do with reality, International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach said on Saturday.
Bach, who is stepping down in June after 12 years in charge of the biggest job in world sports, said the IOC had needed to fight off many similar campaigns before and after the Paris Games.
The boxing competition at the Paris Games was run by the IOC after it stripped the International Boxing Association (IBA) of recognition last year over its failure to implement reforms on governance and finance.
Photo: AFP
The IBA, run by Russian businessman Umar Kremlev with close links to the Kremlin, accused the IOC during Games of allowing Lin and Khelif, who had been banned by the IBA following a chromosome test a year earlier, to compete.
A bitter war of words ensued between the two organizations and hogged the headlines during the Games.
Lin, who won the women’s 57kg (featherweight) title at the Paris Games, and Khelif faced online abuse during and after the Olympics following the IBA’s accusations.
“I would not consider this [Paris Games gender row] a real crisis because all this discussion is based on a fake news campaign coming from Russia,” Bach said in an interview at the southern Greek seaside resort where his successor is to be elected on Thursday.
“This was part of the many, many fake news campaigns we had to face from Russia before Paris and after Paris,” he said.
Several such campaigns happened before Paris, including what the IOC said at the time were repeated hacking attempts, as well as a prank call by a Russian group targeting Bach and pretending to be African Union Commission representatives.
Bach said the dispute over the boxers would have been a non-issue were it not for the IBA, given that Lin and Khelif had competed for years, including at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, with no problems.
“It [the dispute] has nothing to do with the reality. These two female focuses were born as women, they were raised as women, they have been competing as women, they have been winning and losing as every other person,” he said.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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