Imane Khelif’s 46-second Olympic boxing battering of Angela Carini was an ‘incredibly uncomfortable watch’, Lisa Nandy said today.
The Sport Secretary has arrived in Paris but says she has already spoken to female athletes who are ‘very concerned’ about yesterday’s bout.
And Ms Nandy said she will be speaking to sporting bodies about ‘inclusion, fairness and safety’ following the controversial fight.
‘It was an incredibly uncomfortable watch for the 46 seconds that it lasted. And I know that there’s a lot of concern about women competitors, about whether we’re getting the balance right in not just boxing but other sports as well’, she said.
Ms Carini has said she quit to ‘save my life’ just 46 seconds into her bout against her Algerian opponent Imane Khelif, claiming she had been hit so hard that she ‘couldn’t breathe’.
A global backlash, led by Italy’s prime minister and Harry Potter author JK Rowling, has ensued amid safety fears with some experts fearing a female fighter could be killed.
Khelif is one of two fighters, along with Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan, whose athletes compete in the Olympics as Chinese Taipei, present at this year’s Games, despite having been disqualified from the World Championships last year by the International Boxing Association (IBA) for failing to meet gender eligibility criteria.
Ms Nandy said she will be speaking to sporting bodies about ‘inclusion, fairness and safety’ after what she described as an ‘incredibly uncomfortable watch’ when asked about the Olympic boxing gender row.
Condemnation following the fight has come from various quarters including Reem Alsalem, who is the UN’s special rapporteur on violence against women and girls (VAWG), some MPs, author JK Rowling and champion boxer Nicola Adams.
Ms Alsalem said Carini had ‘rightly followed her instincts and prioritised her physical safety, but she and other female athletes should not have been exposed to this physical and psychological violence based on their sex’.
Ms Nandy described the short fight as ‘an incredibly uncomfortable watch’ and acknowledged concern about ‘getting the balance right’ in boxing and other sports when it comes to female competitors.
But she said the ‘biological facts are far more complicated than is being presented on social media and in some of the speculation’.
She told the BBC: ‘The decision that successive governments have made is that these are complex decisions that should be made by sporting bodies. In this case, for example, I understand that the biological facts are far more complicated than is being presented on social media and in some of the speculation.
‘But I think as sporting bodies try to get that balance between inclusion, fairness and safety, there is a role for government to make sure that they’ve got the guidance and the framework and the support to make those decisions correctly and it’s something that I’ll be talking to sporting bodies about over the coming weeks and months.’
Adams, who won gold for Team GB in the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Friday: ‘After years of fighting for women’s boxing to even exist in the Olympics and then all the training they go through to get there it was hard to watch another fighter be forced to give up on her Olympic dreams.
‘People not born as biological women, that have been through male puberty, should not be able to compete in women’s sport. Not only is this unfair it’s dangerous!’
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has hit out at the ‘aggression’ against both Khelif and Lin, saying all athletes participating this year ‘comply with the competition’s eligibility and entry regulations, as well as all applicable medical regulations set by the Paris 2024 Boxing Unit’.
The IOC added: ‘We have seen in reports misleading information about two female athletes competing at the Olympic Games Paris 2024.
‘The two athletes have been competing in international boxing competitions for many years in the women’s category, including the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, International Boxing Association (IBA) World Championships and IBA-sanctioned tournaments.
‘The current aggression against these two athletes is based entirely on this arbitrary decision, which was taken without any proper procedure – especially considering that these athletes had been competing in top-level competition for many years.’
Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni protested after her nation’s Olympic hopeful was left sobbing on her knees in the ring following the contentious match against a rival previously banned for having an ‘unfair advantage’.
Ms Meloni added: ‘I was emotional yesterday when she wrote ‘I will fight’ because the dedication, the head, the character, surely also play a role in these things. But then it also matters to be able to compete on equal grounds and, from my point of view, it was not an even contest.’
The Italian premier was joined by Ms Rowling, former British PM Liz Truss and Sir Andy Murray’s mother, Judy, as well as female sports stars, in condemning the scenes.
The fight between the two 25-year-olds ended after Carini was rocked by two punches and said later the savage force of the blows had made it ‘impossible to continue’. Carini, a police officer, fell to her knees and burst into tears as she conceded the match, shouting: ‘This is unjust.’
Her prime minister, who was visiting the Olympic Village yesterday, said: ‘This, from my point of view, was not a competition on equal terms. It is a fact that with the levels of testosterone present in the blood of the Algerian athlete the race at the start does not seem fair.’
Women’s rights campaigner Ms Rowling tweeted a video of the fight and wrote: ‘Watch this then explain why you’re OK with a man beating a woman in public for your entertainment. This isn’t sport. From the bullying cheat in red all the way up to the organisers who allowed this to happen, this is men revelling in their power over women.’
Carini was pictured in floods of tears after the match and said she was unable to continue for her health, adding: ‘I have never felt a punch like this.’ Ms Murray wrote on X: ‘This should never have been allowed to happen.’
James Guy, a five-times Olympic medallist member of the British swimming team tweeted: ‘Not fair!’
Former tennis star Martina Navratilova wrote it was ‘a travesty and makes a mockery of all Olympic sports’. Speaking out after her loss,
Carini explained: ‘It could be the match of my life but, in that moment, I had to safeguard my life, too.’