Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, has acknowledged the Olympic bout abandoned amid a mounting gender row was “incredibly uncomfortable” viewing.
Paris organisers have faced a storm of criticism after Italian Angela Carini abandoned her contest with Imane Khelif, who previously failed two gender tests, after 46 seconds.
Carini, 25, was distraught in the aftermath, disclosing that she had feared for her life. The UN’s special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, MPs, author JK Rowling and champion boxer Nicola Adams have since expressed dismay at the International Olympic Committee for allowing Khelif to box women.
Giving the UK Government’s view for the first time, Nandy said she will be speaking to sporting bodies about “inclusion, fairness and safety”. She described the short fight as “an incredibly uncomfortable watch” and cited concern about “getting the balance right” in boxing and other sports. But she said the “biological facts are far more complicated than is being presented on social media and in some of the speculation”.
Those comments appear to be a reference to Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, who fights on Friday, being accused of being men by critics online. The International Boxing Association claims both twice failed eligibility tests to compete as women in 2022 and 2023. But those tests are not recognised by the Olympics, who instead accept both are women on the basis of their passports saying so.
Nandy confirmed she had watched the controversial fight on Thursday, which was screened live on Eurosport but not on the BBC. “It was an incredibly uncomfortable watch for the 46 seconds that it lasted,” she told the BBC. “And I know that there’s a lot of concern about women competitors, about whether we’re getting the balance right in not just boxing but other sports as well.
“The decision that successive governments have made is that these are complex decisions that should be made by sporting bodies. In this case, for example, I understand that the biological facts are far more complicated than is being presented on social media and in some of the speculation.
“But I think as sporting bodies try to get that balance between inclusion, fairness and safety, there is a role for government to make sure that they’ve got the guidance and the framework and the support to make those decisions correctly and it’s something that I’ll be talking to sporting bodies about over the coming weeks and months.”