Shannon Sharpe speaks out on Olympic boxing controversy

After Pat McAfee promoted false narratives about the gender of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, his ESPN colleague Shannon Sharpe appeared to do more research.

Khelif has been the target of a global conversation after defeating Italy’s Angele Carini in their women’s welterweight match at the 2024 Paris Olympics. The victory for Khelif sparked false claims that she was genetically male. Those claims were amplified by McAfee during a five-minute rant to open his show on ESPN Thursday afternoon, even after admitting, “I haven’t done enough research” on the topic.

But on the latest episode of his Nightcap podcast with co-host Chad Johnson, Sharpe seemingly did the most basic research.

“She was born a woman,” Sharpe said definitively. “Transgender people are trying to get rights. And when they go to Capitol Hill, these senators and representatives on the other side ask doctors very specific questions . ‘Doc, I want to ask you one thing, can this woman have a child?’ Yes she can…So how is she not a woman? Biologically and anatomically, how is she not a woman?”

Sharpe proceeded to reference the recent example of Caster Semenya, a South African middle-distance runner and two-time Olympic gold medalist who naturally has high levels of testosterone and has spent years fighting to race without restrictions.

“They wanted her to take blockers to block it. You don’t want me to take things to help me win, PEDs, but you want me to ingest something in my body to suppress what God has made me?” Sharpe asked. “Everybody always says God made you man and woman. He made her like this… Every man doesn’t have the same level of testosterone, but if he’s born with those parts, is he any less of a man? If a woman is born with those parts and she produces a high level of testosterone, does that make her any less of a woman?”

Johnson seemed surprised to learn Khelif is a woman, noting that “on Twitter I’ve been seeing all the clips with the boxer and they say the person that was in the ring was transgender and a was a man.”

“She’s not identifying as a woman,” Sharpe added of Khelif to counter the false claims being spewed on social media. “She’s a woman.”

Khelif competed in the 2020 Olympics before losing in the quarterfinals without igniting any public outcry. It wasn’t until 2023 that Khelif’s gender became a point of contention, when she was disqualified from the world championships because of a test from the International Boxing Association.

But the International Olympic Committee defaults to the gender on an athlete’s passport after voting to remove the IBA as its governing body for boxing in 2019. Khelif is Algerian, where it is illegal to be transgender and would not approve a passport with a gender different from what was assigned at birth.

Sharpe and Johnson continued down a path that led to a discussion about transgender athletes, but maintained that topic is separate from Khelif’s situation, despite what you may have heard or read by countless other media members.

[ Nightcap ]

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