TEST RESULTS CONFIRM JUST HOW BAD THE FACT-CHECKING WAS ON ALGERIAN BOXER IMANE KHELIF

National Review

 

Test Results Confirm How Bad the Fact-Checking Was on Algerian Boxer Imane Khelif

By Abigail Anthony

June 4, 2025 6:30 AM

 

The confident claims that the boxer is a woman look even less defensible today.

 

During the Paris Olympics last summer, I wrote a news article for National Review about Italian boxer Angela Carini quitting 46 seconds into a boxing match against Algeria’s Imane Khelif, one of two competitors in the women’s boxing division who was previously disqualified from the 2023 International Boxing Association Women’s World Boxing Championships after failing a sex-identification test. The International Boxing Association president said in 2023 that Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting were ineligible for the women’s championship title because DNA tests “proved they had XY chromosomes.” The association’s leader, Umar Kremlev, added that the two athletes “attempted to deceive their colleagues and passed themselves off as women.”

 

After the world watched Carini suffer Khelif’s powerful blows to the face, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) strained itself defending “inclusive” policies and its lack of sex-verification screening. The Paris 2024 Boxing Unit and the IOC asserted that, like previous competitions, “the gender and age of the athletes are based on their passport.” The International Olympic Committee’s “Portrayal Guidelines” in 2024 stated that “a person’s sex category is not assigned based on genetics alone.” National Review was among many outlets that insisted women’s divisions must be women’s divisions, and all available evidence suggested that Khelif and Lin are male; it didn’t matter how they were perceived by doctors at birth, how they were raised, or how they identify. As we said in an editorial at the time, “genetics do determine sex — regardless of what we ‘assign’ or what letter is printed on a passport.” Ultimately, both Khelif and Lin were permitted to continue competing in the women’s division, and each won a gold medal in their respective weight class.

 

Well, nearly a year after the controversy began, an important document was leaked. Alan Abrahamson — a seasoned American journalist and member of the International Olympic Committee’s press committee — just published an excerpt of Khelif’s 2023 test results from a certified and accredited lab that stated “chromosome analysis reveals male karyotype.” Such a claim is consistent with reports from last summer that Khelif had a difference in sexual development (DSD) condition, and test results revealed a testosterone level befitting that of a male. It is also consistent with the statements of several previous opponents that Khelif threw unusually hard punches. And it is consistent with Khelif’s mysterious withdrawal after initially appealing the International Boxing Association’s decision. Abrahamson’s document also neatly explains why Khelif has never personally released test results to counteract the fierce public criticism. Most important, the leaked excerpt confirms what we see with our own eyes.

 

Despite the overwhelming evidence that was available last summer, the mainstream media churned out “fact checking” articles insisting that Khelif is a woman, biology doesn’t matter, and conservatives were pouncing on this poor athlete to advance draconian “transphobic” policies.

 

USA Today, a paper that demoted its deputy opinion editor after he acknowledged the fact that “pregnant people” are in fact “women,” suddenly developed the ability to distinguish exactly who qualifies as a woman. During the Paris Olympics in 2024, USA Today published an article titled “Fact check on Algerian fighter Imane Khelif, DSDs, biology and Olympic boxing” that states unreservedly, “Khelif is a woman, who is not transgender, nor identifies as intersex.” The extremely reliable, wholly unbiased sources provided for that claim are GLAAD, a nonprofit organization that focuses on media representation of LGBTQ+ characters, and InterACT, an organization that aims to “empower intersex youth.” What other flimsy claims are attributed to these sources and presented as incontrovertible truth in the “fact check” article? Here’s one: “Transgender inclusion has had no negative effect on gender parity at the Olympics, according to GLAAD and InterACT.” Of course, the publication didn’t neglect the opportunity to disparage people who hold “anti-LGBTQ” positions, asserting in a subheading that “conservatives seize on boxing to spread anti-trans rhetoric.”

 

GLAAD itself issued a “fact check” article in August 2024 to provide guidance for “media and journalists covering the Olympics.” The organization stated that “Imane Khelif is a cisgender woman,” and “it is not verified that Imane Khelif has a variation in sex traits or DSDs.” But any stringent sex-verification test to prove the former claim would have disproved the latter. GLAAD also asserts the following “fact”: “Cisgender women of color, such as Caster Semenya and Serena Williams, often become targets of transphobic rhetoric due to white essentialism and supremacy that narrowly define femininity.” Putting aside the commentary on race and “transphobia,” the statement is demonstrably false and self-defeating because Semenya — who has won gold medals in Olympics women’s running — is a man. The Court of Arbitration for Sport confirmed that Semenya has a DSD condition known as 46 XY 5-ARD (5-alpha-reductase deficiency). Semenya has XY chromosomes and testes, as well as testosterone levels within the normal range for an adult male. In an interview, Semenya declared that “being born without a uterus or with internal testicles” doesn’t “make me less of a woman,” but I beg to differ.

 

Although examples related to Khelif are plentiful, I need not cite them all here to demonstrate that the mainstream media print propaganda under the guise of “fact checking” while accusing critics of “spreading misinformation.” Perhaps the issue is that supposedly reputable journalists and publications simply do not understand the word “fact,” in the same way they cannot define “woman.”