Imane Khelif posts defiant message following Olympic rule changes to ‘protect the female category’

Imane Khelif, the Olympic boxer who was at the center of controversy surrounding her gender and her gold medal boxing victory at the Paris Olympics, has spoken out for the first time after the International Olympic Committee announced new rules to “protect the female category” in Olympic sports.

Questions about Khelif’s gender popped up during her run to Olympic boxing gold last summer, stemming from a failed test result from a gender eligibility test she took that barred her from the 2023 World Championships. 

Khelif appeared to respond to the IOC decision days ago to form a working group that will be tasked with safeguarding women’s sports, and the new IOC policy is expected to ban transgender athletes as well as those with differences of sexual development from taking part in the female category. 

In a post on Monday, Khelif wrote in an Instagram Story, ​​”Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

The post also included the song “I’m Still Here” by Sia. 

Khelif was assigned female at birth and is not transgender, but faced questions about her gender during the Olympics, causing some to question the fairness of the boxer to compete in the sport’s female category during the Paris Games. 

She has faced calls for her to be stripped of her gold medal recently, which included the president of the International Boxing Association. 

The controversy was brought back into the spotlight earlier this month as well, after 3 Wire Sports published leaked test results from 2023, which appeared to show she had male XY chromosomes. 

New International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry said during her first meeting that there would be no action taken “retrospectively” in regards to past results that were in question. 

It was during that same meeting that Coventry announced her plan to have the IOC address the issue of transgender athletes competing in female sports. 

“It was agreed by the members that the IOC should take a leading role in this,” Coventry said during the livestreamed meeting, according to The Guardian. “And that we should be the ones to bring together the experts and the international federations and ensure that we find consensus.

“We understand that there will be differences depending on the sports. But it was fully agreed that as members that, as the IOC, we should make the effort to place emphasis on protection of the female category.”