The Khelif incident is based on a conflict between the International Boxing Association, which is very close to the Kremlin, and a new global organization, World Boxing, whose problems are closely linked to Russia’s “sporting power”. An important element of Vladimir Putin’s diplomacy.
1wellIn the quarter-finals of the women’s boxing competition under 66 kg of the Paris Olympic Games, August 2024, Angela Carini gave up in the first round after a forty-six-second fight against the Algerian Imane Khelif. The Italian explained The Sports Gazette: “I could no longer breathe with the second blow; this is not a defeat for me.” After the decision was announced, he did not shake his opponent’s hand, but shortly afterwards he explained that it was not intentional and apologized for it.
Angela Carini does not seem to have made any discriminatory decision that questions the femininity of the Algerian boxer. However, her statements and behaviors will be distorted and used to the point of triggering a global debate, and a clear dividing line will emerge: on the one hand, there is the Imane Khelif, who is also a defender of the cause of LGBT and minority rights, and on the other hand, the defenders of ultra-conservative morality, supported by the radical right, who believe that she should not be allowed to compete. The Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, therefore estimated that the fight was “not on an equal footing”. Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, as well as JK Rowling and thousands of social media users, were not left out by these hurtful statements, so much so that Imane Khelif decided to file a complaint for “online harassment and hatred”.
Media around the world gave extensive coverage to the controversy, which would remain one of the notable events of the Paris Olympics and which exposed issues that had little to do with Imane Khelif’s testosterone levels.
A debate that is completely unsportsmanlike
As soon as the fight against Carini was over, the controversy grew rapidly; Khelif’s critics did not forget to point out that just over a year ago, during the world championships held in India in March 2023, the Algerian player was disqualified by the International Boxing Association (IBA), following a femininity check, as was Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting (who will be Olympic champion under 57 kg in Paris on August 11).
The Algerian boxer was set to be removed from the competition after high testosterone levels were revealed, proving his male karyotype. The problem: Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting’s tests were not recognized as valid by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which described them as “not reliable.” Moreover, the results of these tests were not shown at the press conference held by the IBA in a hotel hall in Paris on Monday, August 5, 2024.
Instead, IBA President Umar Kremlev launches into a lengthy diatribe in Russian via video, in which he accuses the IOC of “destroying women’s sport” and calls IOC President Thomas Bach a “sodomy in chief.”
Finally, Kremlev announced that he planned to give Italian Angela Carini a $100,000 bonus as compensation to show how much he values his athletes.
IBA-World Boxing clash
Umar Kremlev has a dubious past. He has made the conflict clear by remaining loyal to Vladimir Putin. Explaining his arrival at the helm of the IBA requires going back in detail to the myriad dysfunctions the IOC has identified.
Faced with a debt bill of CHF 15 million, numerous administrative problems and an arbitration scandal, the IOC came to the point of excluding the IBA in October 2019, a decision confirmed two years later by a report by lawyer Richard McLaren. Below is a waltz of presidents, all involved in more or less serious matters. Umar Kremlev took the IBA presidency against the Dutchman Boris Van der Vorst on December 12, 2020, in a climate marked by the Covid-19 pandemic. It is true that he offered to personally repay the debt (using money from Gazprom) in the event of victory.
At the Yerevan congress in September 2022, Umar Kremlev was re-elected after a parody of the vote. An opposition federation called World Boxing, led by Boris Van der Vorst and which today has 44 members, was established, while immediately reintroducing Russian and Belarusian boxers (who were suspended after the attack on Ukraine in February 2022) to international competitions in the federations.
The uncertainty of the French position
“Those who vote for the Russians will be the assassins of boxing,” said Dominique Nato, the president of the French Boxing Federation (FFB), ahead of the Yerevan meeting. But a year later, when the World Women’s Boxing Championships in India were boycotted by several countries in protest at the presence of Russian and Belarusian athletes, he argued that, when asked whether representatives of the regimes of Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko were present, France “has every interest in remaining neutral” as France prepares to hold the 2024 JOP.
At the time, it was understandable, but now that the World Championships have passed and the assurances have been received by the IOC that a boxing competition will take place at the 2024 Olympic Games, it is no longer so. The FFB does not participate in World Boxing, no doubt for fear of this impartiality being violated – although, apart from Switzerland and Spain, the 13 countries that best represent Europe in terms of economy and/or population are its members. After the World Championships in India, the FFB refused to take a position on the Khelif case, despite knowing full well that the boxer had trained in France and was physically prepared by a man from Bordeaux. The IBA is benefiting from this. Two French boxing stars – Estelle Mossely, Olympic champion at the Rio 2016 Games and IBA ambassador, and Sofiane Oumiha, world champion under 60kg – are heavily involved in Umar Kremlev’s side without any sanctions, but Mossely’s name is quickly disappearing from the list of possible standard-bearers for the French delegation at the JOP.
France could have made itself clear during the Khelif affair, in any case, by sending a clear message of support to Algeria in the face of Kremlev’s attacks on one of its best athletes; it had also pushed Algeria elsewhere to leave the IBA and join it on September 2. Shortly afterwards, World Boxing; such a message would undoubtedly be very useful at a time when political relations are difficult (the Kaylia Nemour affair, the alliance of Paris with Rabat against Algeria on the Western Sahara issue in July 2024).
Russia’s ‘sports powerhouse’ in trouble on the African continent and elsewhere
Nigeria is the only African country participating in the World Boxing Championship: with the exception of Algeria, the continent seems to be completely dependent on the IBA. But there are cracks. In 2023, the IBA faced opposition from 30 (out of 54) members of the African Boxing Confederation, which accused it of being too heavily involved in the selection of members of this continental body.
On top of that, we have recently observed the postponement of the Friendship Games, which were scheduled to be held in Moscow and Yekaterinburg from September 15 to 29, 2024, and would have brought together mainly African countries; the relative failure of the Future Games, a global “phygital” sports events tournament that mixed physical and digital events, held in Russia in February 2024; and the failure of the BRICS Games, also held in Russia in June 2024. All of this illustrates the difficulties of Russia’s “sports power,” a country where sports and politics are so intertwined that researcher Lukas Aubin coined the term 2021. sportocracyhas evolved since then.
Moscow and the IBA seem to have been particularly focused on Asia lately. The extraordinary congress of the Asian Boxing Confederation (ASBC) was held in Al Ain, Saudi Arabia on August 31, 2024. The question on the agenda: Should it remain in the IBA or join World Boxing? Of the continent’s 35 federations, 21 voted to remain in the IBA, while 14 voted to join World Boxing. Of those 14, 8 already belonged to World Boxing – since Japan joined. Japan joining World Boxing could have an impact on Thailand, whose ASBC boxing federation president resigned after the vote. The truth is that most Asian countries currently remain within the IBA. Is this due to Umar Kremlev’s actions? In any case, a well-equipped boxing league was established in China at the beginning of September 2024.
Can France’s neutrality be defended?
Beyond the personal situation of boxer Imane Khelif (it is necessary to emphasize that the attacks she suffered after her victory over Carini did not prevent her from focusing on the tournament and winning, thus bringing Algeria one of its most important achievements, two gold medals at the Olympics), this episode revealed the reality of the current high-level “amateur” boxing world, where the deep opposition between World Boxing and the IBA intersects and is inextricably linked to the regime of Vladimir Putin, who has taken up the subject of promoting his vision of “traditional values” to the world through Olympic boxing.
While World Boxing works to develop democratic structures for the governance of international amateur boxing, the French Federation, by opting for neutrality, maintains a very uncertain position that is likely to be exploited by the IBA. More generally, Umar Kremlev relies on money and the professionalization of the noble art to maintain his influence. But wasn’t this orientation the Trojan horse within the IOC, when the IBA accepted professional boxers in 2012? Should we return to the “amateurism” of the past? Surely a balance must be found. This requires a real socio-historical-political analysis of the deviations that the sport can produce, otherwise we will be doomed to see them repeated…
