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The Hungarian Boxing Association has protested against the decision to allow Algerian Imane Khelif to compete at the Olympics ahead of her bout with Hungary’s Anna Luca Hamori.
Meanwhile, the Algerian Olympic Committee said it had lodged a complaint to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) over what it said was a “violation” against Khelif.
It’s the latest in the controversy around 25-year-old Khelif’s participation in the Olympic women’s boxing, which has continued to escalate over Angela Carini on Thursday, when the Italian abandoned the fight after 46 seconds.
Khelif is one of two boxers competing in Paris this year after being disqualified from last year’s world championships for failing to meet gender eligibility criteria. The other is Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, who on Friday won through to a quarter-final in the 57kg category.
Both have fought for several years in women’s boxing before the 2023 decision by the International Boxing Association (IBA), a discredited Russia-led body stripped by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of running boxing in Paris.
The IOC said the IBA’s decision to disqualify the boxers last year was “sudden”, “arbitrary” and made “without due process”.
Khelif is accused of having excessive testosterone, leading some critics to argue that it could give her a dangerous advantage in a combat sport.
No test results have shown either Khelif or Lin experienced male puberty, with the IBA not releasing details of its 2023 test.
Neither athletes have publicly identified as transgender or intersex.
The IOC has defended its decision to allow Khelif and Lin, a double-world champion, to compete in the Paris Games.
“These boxers are completely eligible. They are women on their passports, they are women who have competed in the Tokyo Olympics and have been competing for many years. I think we all have a responsibility to tone it down and not turn it into a witch hunt,” IOC spokesperson Mark Adams said on Tuesday.
But Hungary’s boxing federation, the MOB, has protested this. It said on Friday it had written to the Hungarian Olympic Committee objecting to the participation of Khelif, ahead of her fight against Hamori.
“The MOB is … continuously examining the means it can use to protect Hamori’s rights to fair competition under the rules in force,” it said in a statement.
“The MOB president has initiated immediate consultations with the IOC Director of Sport to clarify the situation.”
As she prepares to face Khelif, Hamori posted a cartoon of a slender woman in a boxing ring alongside a huge beast on Instagram.
That post is believed to have sparked the Algerian Olympic Committee’s complaint to the lOC. It wrote on Facebook it had been filed due to a “serious violation and transgression of the ethics of sport… by one of the participants in the boxing tournament”.
The Facebook post continued: “The IOC has issued a final warning to violators, with an order to delete every post that harms our heroine, Imane Khelif.”
In the aftermath of her fight against Khelif, Carini said she had “never felt a punch like this” and refused to shake hands.
But Carini apologised for her comments and behaviour a day later.
“All this controversy makes me sad … if the IOC said she can fight, I respect that decision,” she told the Italian newspaper Gazetta Dello Sport.
“I want to apologise to her and everyone else. I was angry because my Olympics had gone up in smoke.”
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