Bulgarian Olympic boxing champion Stoika Krasteva commented to BNT the participation of Imane Khalif from Algeria and Yu-Ting Lin from Taiwan at the Paris Games, which caused an international scandal.
On Thursday, Algeria’s Imane Khelief defeated Italy’s Angela Carini in a round of 16 match in Paris that lasted just 46 seconds. Italy’s representative quit herself, complaining that she had been hit too hard.
Yesterday, the International Boxing Association issued a statement on the case.
“The participation of non-gender tested athletes in the women’s Olympic boxing tournament at the Paris Games is a violation of the athletes’ rights by both the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and World Boxing,” said a statement from The International Boxing Association (IBA),” published on the organization’s website.
Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting and Algeria’s Imane Khalif were banned from last year’s world championships because of their hormone results, which exceeded the maximum permissible values. According to the IOC, there is no problem because they also competed in Tokyo 2020. This is how they came to participate in the Olympic Games in Paris.
Bulgaria is directly affected by this incident, because Lin is the next opponent of the Bulgarian Svetlana Kamenova in the quarterfinals of the boxing tournament.
“I expect it to happen. Svetlana is sufficiently prepared. I don’t think this is right. Competitors and coaches should not take measures on this case. This is an international scandal. Given that the IBA has suspended the rights of the two competitors who obviously they cannot prove that they are women, it is not right for the IOC to allow them to a competition of such a rank,” said Stoika Krasteva.
“These are obviously not women. I have lost a world championship final to one of the two. Purely physically there is no way a woman can be equal to these two young men. Not to mention the psychological moment. They are not women. There is no way they want to they make the whole world accept the different as something normal, and the normal become an exception,” commented the Olympic champion.
Krasteva also announced that Imane Khalif did not participate in a tournament in our country. “Both contestants did not participate in the “Strandja” Cup tournament,” announced Krasteva.
Our national competitor and participant in the Paris Games, Stanimira Petrova, also commented on the scandalous topic with the two boxers from Algeria and Taipei.
“Actually, I don’t have any evidence. I am for equality and justice. And if they are not women, they should not compete with women. I wish Svetla success, because she is directly dependent and related to one of them, the representative of Taipei I also miss her, then there was no doubt that she was not a woman. Thank you to all of Bulgaria for the support,” Petrova told BNT.
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