On Thursday, the social media world erupted with discussion around Algerian women’s boxer Imane Khelif. That started after her opening-round opponent, Angela Carini of Italy, withdrew after 46 seconds.
Carini said afterwards “she wasn’t making a political statement and was not refusing to fight Khelif” ( as per Greg Beacham of The Associated Press). But everyone from Italian premier Giorgia Meloni to novelist and anti-transgender activist JK Rowling weighed in afterwards with false claims like “genetically male” and “male” about Khelif.
That led to social media blowing up with arguments over this. And that led to Pat McAfee spending five-plus minutes discussing it on his The Pat McAfee Show on ESPN and YouTube. There, he specifically made the false claim Khelif was “deemed a male” and discussed her as having a “potentially male body.” He also spent a lot of time discussing transgender people and athletes (Khelif was assigned as a woman at birth, and has not discussed being transgender). Here’s that full clip, which runs almost six minutes:
Here are transcriptions of a few key moments there, with timestamps of where each starts. At the start, McAfee brings this up, and gets right to “I haven’t done enough research” and “deemed a male.” Here’s what he said there:
“The women’s boxing, I haven’t done enough research. I saw that the International Boxing Association deemed a couple of the boxers that are in the Olympics, still in the Olympics, not eligible to box in women’s boxing because they had too much testosterone or they were deemed a male, I believe, from XY chromosome, from the research that I’ve done.
“So now we’re watching the Olympics, and this Italian girl has made it, she’s committed her whole life to boxing, committed her whole life, this girl. Her dad passed away, I do believe, very recently. I assume her and her dad hitting, I assume that’s the big story.
“And then all of a sudden, she finds herself in the Olympics, moving forward, and she has to fight somebody from Algeria who has been banned from other competitions because not woman enough to compete. And then 46 seconds into her Olympic fight with this person, this woman from Algeria, she gets a broken nose, and afterwards she cries, like ‘I’ve never been punched that hard in my life.’
“And for me, it’s like, this conversation has been happening for a few years. And I am coming from a very empathetic point of view as well. Because as we all kind of learn about the transgender situation that was happening for people, I think we were all incredibly like, bummed. Like, that would be terrible. Like, if your soul didn’t match your body. That would be quite a conflict every single day.”
McAfee went on to extensive discussion of souls, bodies, and transgender people, which, again, no one has said is relevant to Khelif. Then he started talking about trans athletes in sports in general and Khelif in particular, around 1:48:
“When it comes to sports, the physical body is the one competing. So I think there should be some sort of conversation there, especially at very, very high levels. Because when you’re talking about Olympics and dreams and chasing, that girl from Italy, her entire life was committed, and then she gets into a fight with somebody who physically is going to be more capable, just throughout history, then she even has the possibility of being.”
McAfee then brought up swimming gold medal times and put up a graphic showing that men’s times are far shorter than women’s over the same distance. But that’s again not really the issue here; Khelif was not assigned male at birth and has not transitioned. This debate is far closer to that around runner Caster Semenya at past Olympics, a debate that touched on intersex people and what levels of testosterone are acceptable in women’s competition.
What is known about Khelif is detailed well in Beacham’s AP article on this fight. She won a silver medal at the International Boxing Association’s 2022 world championships, but was disqualified from last year’s IBA championships shortly before her gold-medal fight, with the IBA only saying that was over elevated levels of testosterone.
The IBA itself does not govern Olympic boxing any more. It was banned from the Games in 2019 after years of disputes with the International Olympic Committee. As Beacham notes in his article on this fight, that ban came “following years of governance problems, a lack of financial transparency and many perceived instances of corruption in judging and refereeing. The IBA is controlled by president Umar Kremlev, who is Russian. He brought in Russian state-owned Gazprom as its primary sponsor and moved much of the IBA’s operations to Russia.”
So the only action against Khelif from a governing body to date comes from a body the Olympics no longer recognizes (they handle boxing sanctioning themselves now). And the IOC has specifically said Khelif (and two-time world champion Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan, who was also questioned this week) can compete, citing the passports issued to them. There, spokesperson Mark Adams said Tuesday “Everyone competing in the women’s category is complying with the competition eligibility rules. They are women in their passports and it’s stated that this is the case, that they are female.”
Back to McAfee, after the swimming discussion, he brought up gender in sports in general around 2:42, after discussing different rules for men’s and women’s sports.
“All of a sudden, now the conversation has turned and it’s like ‘There is no difference.’ No, there is. Especially at a very high level. And I just hope that the people who are much smarter than us can kind of sort through that. Because, again, a lot of empathy, I want you to live your absolute best life. But I have a daughter who is 15 months old, happy anniversary to my lovely bride, I have a daughter who is 15 months old, and if she works her entire life to get to a massive platform, to the biggest competition of all time, and she has to take on a [trails off]…that is unfair. That is just unfair.”
After further discussion there, McAfee said at 3:28 “At the highest level of competition, there is a clear advantage. There always has been. I assume there always will be. And I hope we get to a point where we can all agree on this. I assume we all feel the same way about this.
“Once again, empathetic, once again, do not appreciate that that has been their lives, being conflicted, but when it comes to sports, especially at the Olympic level, or at the NCAA championship level, or at the professional level, there’s people that abuse the empathy in lieu of competition and take advantage of the entire situation. Don’t rule that out of the picture.
“But also, we have to figure out how that can all work going forward. Because we want everybody to be happy, we want everybody to compete, but also we need some fairness. And there’s no reason that we should be seeing a potential male physical body punching a woman. Like, that is just, like, growing up, that’s the worst thing that you could possibly do.
“And now we’ve gotten to a point where it’s like ‘Well, is it?’ It is. If that girl from Italy was to inject testosterone into herself, which would make her more like a male physical body, she would be banned. She would be banned. Because that’s what they would be testing for.
“It’s a very obviously interesting subject because of how new it is. And Riley Gaines, obviously, has been in the forefront, because she comes in second to a swimmer who competed in the men’s college and then comes into the women’s one. And I haven’t looked into it enough, but this Olympics thing that happened with the Italian, it’s sad. Like, this is a very sad situation. And she breaks her nose in 40 seconds. We have to acknowledge at least a little bit of something while also understanding that these people and their lives is vastly different than everybody else.”
Around 5:15, McAfee wraps up by saying his show is unified on this, and on calling for change here.
“With that being said, we shout out the Olympics. We’re thankful for the Olympics. But the Olympics is also something that potentially broadcasts a spotlight on a situation that we can all kind of rally around, understand, and move forward with. And that’s how I think our entire show feels, that’s how I feel.
“I do not want to, you know, I haven’t done enough research, we hope the smart people figure it out. But that’s just, it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense. We’re pretty confused by it. And I assume there are people that are smarter than us who will tell us why and how this all works out. But as somebody who’s been in sports my entire life, I don’t fully understand how we got to this point.”
In this segment, McAfee made several specific claims on Khelif that no one else credible has yet advanced. Those include “deemed a male” and “a potential male physical body.”
The only previous comments on that front appear to be from IBA president Umar Kremlev in 2023 around Khelif’s disqualification by his organization. There, he told Russian state news agency TASS “Based on DNA tests, we identified a number of athletes who tried to trick their colleagues into posing as women. According to the results of the tests, it was proved that they have XY chromosomes. Such athletes were excluded from competition.” But Khelif and the Algerian Olympic Committee denied that, the International Olympic Committee deemed her eligible for women’s boxing at these games, and Reuters only reported that the disqualification was over high levels of testosterone. And, as previously noted, Kremlev and the now-Russia-based IBA were banned by the IOC in 2019 over corruption, and are not involved in Olympic boxing.
Irish public broadcaster RTE also ran a piece on this Wednesday featuring Kremlev’s previous comments. But on Thursday, they added a newly-issued IBA statement saying there wasn’t a testosterone test, but rather unspecified “recognized testing”:
In the hours after this article was first published, the International Boxing Association (IBA) circulated a new public statement to international media. In it, the IBA says the disqualifications of the boxers were based on “recognised testing.”
The statement says: “the athletes did not undergo a testosterone examination but were subject to a separate and recognised test, whereby the specifics remain confidential. This test conclusively indicated that both athletes did not meet the required necessary eligibility criteria and were found to have competitive advantages over other female competitors.”
It said the decisions were ratified by the IBA Board of Directors.
McAfee’s extensive discussion of transgender people here is also interesting, as Khelif is not transgender. And changing gender is illegal in Algeria , as are many other LGBT rights.
So McAfee’s show is definitely advancing a lot of claims on this front that do not appear to be based on reported information. Strap in for what’s next, because if we’ve learned anything from the last few years, every culture-wars-focused sports media personality is going to have their turn with this one.
Update: This piece has been updated with IBA president Umar Kremlev’s claims on the 2023 disqualifications.
[The Pat McAfee Show on X/Twitter]
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