BUDAPEST: Hungarian boxer Anna Luca Hamori, who will fight the Algerian embroiled in a gender eligibility row at the Paris Olympics, said Friday that her opponent’s inclusion was unfair.
Imane Khelif failed a gender eligibility test last year but is in the women’s boxing competition in Paris and will face Hamori on Saturday in the quarter-finals of the 66kg category.
“In my humble opinion I don’t think it’s fair that this contestant can compete in the women’s category,” the 23-year-old Hamori wrote on Facebook.
“But I cannot concern myself with that now, I cannot change it, it’s life.”
Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting were disqualified from the 2023 world championships in New Delhi, run by the IBA, but both competed at the Tokyo Games in 2021 in the women’s competition and are also in Paris.
The boxing in the French capital is overseen by the International Olympic Committee, not the IBA.
The Algerian boxer’s inclusion sparked a furor after she scored a 46-second win against Italian rival Angela Carini on Thursday.
Neither Khelif nor Lin is known to identify as transgender.
The upcoming fight has caused outrage in Hungary.
Previously Hamori had defended Khelif’s participation, telling Hungary’s state news agency MTI that “if they let her compete here, they must know she’s a woman.”
Hamori is the Central European country’s first woman boxer at the Olympics.
The Hungarian Olympic Committee said it had reached out to the IOC over Khelif’s inclusion, saying it was a “fundamental requirement for equal opportunities for women that only competitors with just female biological characteristics... should be allowed to compete in the women’s field.”
“If the Olympic rules for participation in boxing do not fully guarantee this, the rules should be reviewed and, if necessary, amended,” it said.
The head of the Hungarian Olympic Committee has “initiated immediate consultations” with the IOC’s director of sport to “clarify the situation,” according to the statement.
IOC spokesman Mark Adams said the Olympic body’s eligibility criteria was based on the gender indicated on the boxers’ passports, but acknowledged that it’s “not a black and white issue.”
Earlier this week, the Bulgarian Olympic Committee expressed its indignation at the participation of Khelif and Lin at the Games and said it intended to lodge a formal complaint with the IOC.