Donald Trump has once again repeated the lie that Olympic boxer Imane Khelif is trans – proving he has no clue what he is talking about when it comes to trans people in sports.
Imane Khelif, along with Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, was thrust into the centre of a gender storm at the Paris Games over eligibility regulations when it came to light she was disqualified in 2023 after she failed an eligibility criteria test by the boxing governing body, the IBA.
The Russian-led IBA were later stripped of their world governing body status by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) over integrity and governance issues.
Outspoken personalities such as author JK Rowling and Tesla boss Elon Musk criticised Imane Khelif’s participation in the Games and accused her and Tu-ting of being born male – despite the fact that both boxers met all the relevant criteria to compete at the Games, have lived their lives as women and do not identify as trans.
The IOC backed Khelif and Yu-ting and IOC spokesperson Mark Adams said Khelif both met Olympic eligibility criteria and that her participation was “not a transgender issue“.
Khelif, who is not transgender, won the gold medal and went on to file a lawsuit over “acts of aggravated cyber harassment”, explicitly naming JK Rowling and Elon Musk in the legal documents.
Trump brought up the conspiracy theory once again that the gold medal winning Algerian athlete is a trans woman – which she has said repeatedly she is not – at a commencement speech at the University of Alabama’s graduation ceremony on Thursday evening (1 May).
“As long as I’m president, we will always protect women’s sports. Men will not play in women’s sports,” told a cheering crowd of cheering students.
“No way. They say it’s an 80-20 issue. No, it’s a 97-3 issue, I think. No, men will not be playing in women’s sports,” Trump went on to say. “I said that, and I classified it with a very powerful executive order, as you know. It’s done.”
The executive order he was referring to was titled ‘Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports‘. It bans trans women from participating in female sports and states the US government will “rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities”.
During his speech, Trump went on to bring up Khelif, making reference to her fight against Italy’s Angela Carini which ended after 46 seconds when Carini threw in the towel and refused to shake hands with Khelif.
At the time, Khelif’s quick victory over Carini exacerbated the online campaign against her, with JK Rowling posting a photo of her after the bout on X, writing: “Could any picture sum up our new men’s rights movement better? The smirk of a male who’s knows he’s protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head, and whose life’s ambition he’s just shattered.”
Carini has subsequently said she would apologise to Khelif for how she acted after the match if she met her again.
Trump told the crowd of graduates: “They had a great champion, a female boxer, and after one punch she walked back to the corner and said, ‘I can’t get hit like that, I’ve never been hit like that before.”
The US president, who has invoked a litany of anti-trans policies since returning to the White House in January, also took aim at trans inclusion in other sports like weightlifting and swimming.
Khelif has previously hit back against Trump’s attacks against the trans community, saying she’s not intimidated because she isn’t transgender.
Speaking to ITV News in March, Khelif said the relentless, international campaign against her by prominent figures “hurt a lot” and left her mother requiring hospital care.
But on Trump’s anti-trans policies, she said they do not “concern her”: “I will give you a straightforward answer: the US president issued a decision related to transgender policies in America. I am not transgender. This does not concern me, and it does not intimidate me. That is my response.
“Of course, I defend with everything I have this gold medal… I continue my dream, my everything.”
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