🇭🇺🌐 “A Facebook post by Olympic boxing champion István Kovács Kokó‼️
Boxing was introduced to the Olympics in 1904 and, with two exceptions (1908 and 1912), has been part of the Olympic program ever since. A total of 261 men’s and 17 women’s gold medals have been awarded to champions, making a grand total of 278 gold medals. Over time, three boxers have won three gold medals (including László Papp, Stevenson, and Savon), five male boxers have won two, and three female boxers have done the same. In total, we have records of 264 Olympic boxing champions.
The world has come to know names like László Papp, Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Lennox Lewis, the Klitschko brothers, Anthony Joshua, Vasyl Lomachenko, Oleksandr Usyk, Oscar De La Hoya, Gennady Golovkin, and many other great athletes, thanks to Olympic boxing. So far, there has been only one boxer who clearly did not deserve the gold medal: South Korea’s Park Si-hun, who didn’t even hit Roy Jones Jr. in 1988, yet had his hand raised in victory. He wasn’t at fault, but it was a huge injustice. Park never became a national hero in Korea; in fact, as he admitted to me in 2022, he has been haunted by the events of that day for nearly 36 years.
Last night, Algeria’s Khelif won the same gold medal as the outstanding boxers I mentioned earlier, and as I did myself in 1996. Olympic champion. To many, she is seen as a poor victim. To me, however, she is a cheat. Khelif knew full well that she possesses XY chromosomes, which according to current scientific understanding means she is biologically male, even if she is legally recognized as female and her passport states “woman.” She carries within her genes the differences between men and women. Too weak to compete as a man, too strong to compete as a woman. Even though she has lost several times throughout her career, she should never have been allowed to compete against women. Despite her defeats, she shouldn’t be competing in the women’s category. She knows she has a chromosomal abnormality and was aware of it. At the latest, she must have known in May 2022, when she received the chromosomal test results from the IBA, conducted in an Istanbul lab recognized by WADA. And she received the repeated test results a year later in India. Since I was the Secretary-General during the Istanbul World Championships, this is not a theory for me but a fact.
This is why the IBA disqualified her, but she challenged this result in the Court of Arbitration for Sport, only to withdraw her appeal a few days later without explanation. With this knowledge, she entered the qualifying competition because no one cared about the gender test results there, and she has not been asked for such a test since because it would violate her personal rights. No one cares about the rights of the other women in her weight category.
To me, she is not a victim but a perpetrator who exploited the system’s flaws and took advantage of the genetic benefits conferred by her birth defect. Olympic champion, or more precisely, she has a gold medal just like Ali, László Papp, Lomachenko, and all the other fantastic athletes mentioned above.
This afternoon, I took out my own gold medal and thought about the hard work and suffering that accompanied my journey until it ended up in a cabinet in Óbuda. What has the world come to when someone tries to win it through cheating?
In this crazy world, the Olympics, and sports in general, were perhaps the last remaining areas where the naive could still hope for fairness and justice. At least, I continue to hold onto my passionate love and faith in the Olympics, which gives me strength in everyday life.
I do not believe, nor will I accept, that fairness has ceased to exist.
Translated and edited by Evan Right