I don’t have much to say here about sports cos it’s not something that interests me that much, but it’s Olympics time so I should make some notes on that, I suppose. Been an interesting couple of weeks, haven’t actually watched much of it (though I have rather enjoyed the cycling events, and HOLY SHIT SIMONE BILES welcome back to the podium after the unfortunate Tokyo withdrawal; I think her several medals pretty comprehensively answered everyone who criticised her over that), but the discourse surrounding it has certainly been interesting, and unfortunately kind of ugly at times… and the cases of female boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting were nothing if not that, because the Right will not let women they deem insufficiently “feminine” go unharrassed.
Khelif was a target almost from the start, with a bunch of arseclowns declaring she must be trans cos she (and Lin) allegedly failed some nebulous gender test done by the International Boxing Association, even though the latter never quite explained how or why, and even though Khelif is, frankly, Algerian. Algeria is, to put it lightly, backwards on LGBTQ matters; they’re not going to send a trans athlete to the Olympics, they’re going to send them to jail at best and the morgue at worst. Now, the IBA is a Russian-owned organisation, funded by Gazprom, and the IOC suspended it from overseeing the Olympics a few years ago (which it had done for nearly 100 years in various incarnations) for, frankly, being too corrupt even for the IOC to deal with. The IBA’s real problem with Khelif, evidently, is that at last year’s world championships she beat a Russian boxer who was hitherto undefeated, whereupon the “test” was supposedly administered, Khelif was declared insufficiently “female”, and the Russian woman’s unblemished record was restored.
Khelif went on to win gold the other day, which she’s no doubt satisfied with, but we haven’t heard as much about Lin, and I’d argue that her victory is kind of sweeter:
The second of the two boxers caught up in a gender eligibility row at the Paris Olympics has won gold, 24 hours after the first. The Taiwanese fighter Lin Yu-ting secured a gold medal in convincing fashion by defeating the young Pole, Julia Szeremeta, in the final of the women’s 57kg event. Lin won every round unanimously and was never in trouble, punching the air and embracing her coach after a fight she controlled from the start.
It confirmed the overwhelming supremacy displayed by Lin, who did not drop a round across any of her four fights in Paris. The 28-year-old is a double world champion but had not previously won an Olympic medal. She was beaten in the round of 16 at Tokyo 2020 but proved unassailable here, becoming Taiwan’s second gold winner of the summer. […]
In the ring, Lin made short work of Szeremeta despite her opponent’s attempts to make full use of a springy, mobile, notoriously provocative style. Lin uses her height to sound advantage but moves lightly; she glided around the canvas, controlled the position and tempo of the fight, picked her moments to attack and was unhindered during the first two rounds.
Szeremeta, who had nothing to lose, fought back in the third and went out punching, visibly bruised and bloodied at the end. In an amicable aftermath there was no repeat of the “X” gestures that Karaman and another previous opponent, Svetlana Staneva, had made after defeats by Lin. They had been interpreted in some quarters as a reference to XX chromosomes; Szeremeta, though, took the defeat in good grace and made a heart shape towards her supporters, bowing to all sides and congratulating Lin before departing.
The runner-up was, though, questioned later about the political party she is aligned with. Szeremeta was a candidate for the extreme right party Konfederacja in elections earlier this year, unsuccessfully contesting a local election in Lublin. Konfederacja’s social media activity, largely through reposts on X, has cast doubt over Lin’s eligibility to compete and on Saturday night its feed contained a number of apparent insults towards the winner. Asked whether she would endorse these views, Szeremeta declined to offer a comment.
Though obviously both Khelif and Lin should be pleased with their work, under those circumstances, I feel like Lin should be even happier. For better or worse, however, the real loser could be the sport itself, with the IOC already saying they won’t administer it at the 2028 LA Games after this, so boxing could potentially not happen at the next Games at all. So much for Russia’s national pride, eh…
