Oliver Brown in the Telegraph on the IOC’s reckless endangerment:

At 11.20 on Thursday morning, inside the North Paris Arena, Italian boxer Angela Carini is going to be punched in the head by an opponent who has failed a sex test to fight against women. We already know the punishment that Imane Khelif is capable of inflicting: in 2022, the Algerian landed shots of such force on Mexico’s Brianda Tamara that the beaten fighter said she was grateful simply to escape the ring alive.

The International Olympic Committee is aware of all this. The dispute over Khelif’s biology is recorded in its official Games notes. And yet in a sport where the danger of death is ever-present, and despite studies documenting that men punch 2.6 times harder than women, its response is simply to sit back and do nothing.

It is difficult to imagine a more wretched dereliction of duty. Forget merely discriminating against female athletes, the IOC is now actively exposing them to the potential for extreme harm.

In Khelif and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan, these Olympics have two boxers thrown out of last year’s world championships due to concerns over their testosterone levels. So what are they doing in Paris? Mark Adams, the IOC’s spokesman, sounded irritated that anyone had the temerity to ask. “These boxers are entirely eligible – they are women on their passports,” he bristled. “It’s not helpful to start stigmatising people like this. We all have a responsibility not to turn it into some kind of witch-hunt.”

Thank you. Exactly what I furiously pointed out yesterday. Women on their fucking passports.

Adams’ use of the passport defence is particularly risible. In 2019, the Court of Arbitration for Sport formally established that human biology, rather than legal status or gender identity, was the only means of determining an insuperable male advantage. And now the IOC dares to accuse those asking questions of “stigmatising”? …

The problem is not just that Adams lacks any expertise about boxing, but that a male IOC executive with no skin in the game is presuming to tell women what they should and should not accept. And it is evident, from the mood in Paris and beyond, that many women refuse to put up with this arrogance any longer.

Let’s hope so.