Putin enters the line of Algerian Iman Khalif

Russian President Vladimir Putin, during his meeting with school students in Kyzyl, considered the victory of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif to be "unfair" and "nonsense."

"They are killing women's sports," Putin said. "Any man can simply declare himself a woman and take part in any sport without giving women any chance to win medals, let alone first places," the Associated Press reported Monday.

"A bearded Italian man said he declared himself a woman in order to punch the person who broke the Italian woman's nose in the face," he continued.

Putin appeared to be referring to reports in the Russian media about an Italian boxer who said he wanted to fight Iman. Putin did not mention Iman by name.

Despite being born and raised a woman, Khalif found herself at the centre of heated debates about gender, sexuality and sport after failing the now-banned International Boxing Federation’s (AIBA) ill-defined and opaque eligibility tests for women’s competition.

The IWF conducted unspecified “gender” tests on two female boxers, Khalif and Taiwanese Yu-Ting Lin, during the world championships it organised in New Delhi in June 2023. Both boxers were subsequently disqualified, midway through the competition, after reaching the final stages.

The International Olympic Committee was notified by letter of the tests, saying Khalif had an XY male chromosome, according to media reports.

But the Olympic body has repeatedly rejected the tests as "arbitrary" and "cobbled together" and has argued against so-called sex tests, genetic tests using swabs or blood, which it abolished in 1999.

Khalifa and Lynn were allowed to compete in Paris, because anyone identified as a woman on their passport is eligible to fight.

The International Tennis Federation and other critics say this raises "serious questions about competitive fairness and athlete safety."

At the Paris Olympics, the two players won gold medals in their categories.

(Agencies)