Trump insists on questioning the identity of Olympic boxers without grounds

WashingtonFormer US President Donald Trump on Saturday reiterated his criticism of two Olympic boxing champions, questioning their gender identity.

Trump made the comments at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, vowing to “keep men out of women’s sports.” He said he had been struck by events at the Olympics that concluded last week, particularly the case of two female boxers.

The tycoon has been critical of transgender people in his political rallies for years, specifically targeting their participation in sports. His language about gender identity has been considered erroneous and harmful by LGBTQ+ people.

In the case of the two female boxers, Algerian Imane Khelif and Taiwanese Li Yu-ting, they have faced a series of false and erroneous comments about their gender, following the International Boxing Association, a banned body of the Olympic movement, deciding to disqualify them from the world championship last year, saying they had failed an unspecified eligibility test.

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Donald Trump did not mention the athletes by name, but he did say without arguments that “there were two transgender people at the Olympics.” “They were men. They transitioned to women and they were in boxing,” he said without providing evidence.

Despite being born and raised as women, Khelif and Lin found themselves drawn into an international debate about gender and sport following murky and unspecified tryouts for the International Boxing Association’s women’s competition.

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Cyberbullying investigation

French authorities on Tuesday launched an investigation into a complaint of aggravated cyberbullying filed by Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, a gold medallist at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

France’s national service for combating online hate has opened an investigation into “cyberbullying based on gender, public insult based on gender, public provocation of discrimination and public insult based on origin,” the authorities said.

According to the American magazine Variety, billionaire Elon Musk, owner of the social network X (formerly Twitter) and British writer JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter saga, are named in the complaint.