A pawn in one Gazprom-fueled association’s feud against the Olympics
In a bout of global hysteria against Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting (林郁婷), where the boy wizard author doubled down using a spud analogy and Lin’s defeated opponents ungraciously gestured “X” to signal their allegiance to the growing conspiracy over her gender, the President of Taiwan had to tweet twice in defense of one 28-year-old female athlete who wanted nothing more but to win a fair spot in sweet science history, and did nothing to deserve all this malice. She certainly did not sign up to be a pawn in one Gazprom-fueled association’s feud against the world governing body of the Olympic Games.
ABOUT THAT MANEL
The International Boxing Association (IBA) held a press conference on Aug 5 that has since been described as “farcical,” “shambolic,” and “a car crash” fronted by “utter clowns, possibly criminals… and dingbats.” Instead of clarifying its claims regarding the so-called illegitimacy of Taiwan’s Lin and Algeria’s Imane Khelif, the IBA put forth even more contradictory statements and ignored straight-forward questions in a bumbling event that not only started 57 minutes late but was persistently plagued by low-grade technical issues like mic mishaps and muted conference calls. Several journalists walked out midway after realizing the IBA wasn’t planning to actually answer any honest queries.
The Russian and his henchmen
IBA President Umar Kremlev, who changed his name from Umar Lutfuloev to distance himself from his past criminal record of being twice convicted of racketeering although the Russian boxing kingpin claims he did so to “avoid religious discrimination,” repeatedly asserted that Lin and Khelif were deemed ineligible for their “high testosterone levels” in between long monologues assaulting the “sodomite” IOC President Thomas Bach and the “horrible” Paris 2024 opening ceremony. Yet the IBA has previously stated that it has not tested for testosterone levels.
Without addressing his previous Telegram remarks alleging “XY chromosomes” test results that were widely cited as proof by many online commentators, Kremlev instead postulated “they may be transgender women” — without proof once again — as he appeared as a discombobulated head hovering over his three henchmen via glitchy video link. Relying on an interpreter, the 41-year-old spoke in Russian and retorted that it was up to the two women athletes to prove that they were actual women. It was a classic case of “guilty until proven innocent.”
Kremlev later settled for “genetic testing that shows that these are men,” telling journalists proudly how “We don’t verify what they have between their legs. We don’t know if they were born like that, or if some changes were made.” Because we should put our faith in a Russian Night Wolves biker gang associate and a member of the patriotic order of St. George, a military order presided by warmonger Vladimir Putin himself.
The Russian businessman’s statements were in fact largely disproved by the IBA’s former medical committee chair Ioannis Filippatos himself, who said testosterone had not been tested for. The Greek doctor spent considerable time yammering on about his credentials in obstetrics-gynecology and in-vitro fertilization before boldly declaring “I know who is woman and man.” His defense was: “the medical result, blood result, looks.” Looks, eh?
Because the IOC has cited the passport as legal proof of Lin and Khelif’s womanhood, Filippatos ludicrously proclaimed at the presser: “One passport can give to us the opportunity to be men, and, tomorrow when I go back to Athens, I can go to my government and change my name from Ioannis to Ionnia. That means I am a woman tomorrow? Please.” However, in Taiwan, the gender on one’s passport has to match one’s household registration data from birth and cannot be altered without legal appeal.
The manel’s inability to provide any proof was swiftly attributed to cease-and-desist letters from the Olympic committees of Taiwan and Algeria, with the IBA’s Lombardy-born coach head Gabriele “The Blade” Martelli eagerly sharing the documents on social media the next day. It was not a flex like he implied, for the Taiwanese legal representative simply reminded the IBA that it is illegal to disclose the female athlete’s personal data without her permission. This is line with the European Union’s privacy laws. Moreover, the Sports Administration of Taiwan has made the letter public and stated on Aug 9 that it reserves the right to send a second letter seeking a possible lawsuit.
Altogether, a lack of consensus among Kremlev, Filippatos, Martelli, and Chris Roberts over test details undermines the credibility of IBA’s allegations.
Roberts, a former British army officer turned IBA chief executive, told the room: “We’re not able to disclose the results of any tests but you can read between the lines of where that sits.” He said later also: “The results of the chromosome tests demonstrated both boxers were ineligible.”
He then told the BBC: “The media have brought all of this hype up. Nobody ever said Imane Khelif was a man or the Chinese Taipei boxer, not me.”
ABOUT THOSE CLAIMS
The IBA issued a statement after the press conference that did not align with many of the claims made by its panel, now referring to a “hormonal imbalance” as the basis of its disqualification without a mention of “genetic tests” (Kremlev) or “looks” (Filippatos).
The IBA emphasized that the two independent labs in Istanbul and New Delhi were accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), a moot point since WADA does not oversee gender tests.
The veracity of the tests have also been questioned by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). “I can’t tell you if [the tests] were credible or not credible, because the source from which they came is not credible, and the basis for the test was not credible,” said IOC spokesperson Mark Adams. “Those tests are not legitimate.”
Remarkably, the IBA also attached the very letter it forced Lin to sign last year, without first informing her of its contents. It was a moment in India she described as “ the first time I ever felt bad about having to sign my name.” Her subsequent appeals to the IBA were rejected.
Moreover, the deliberate language of the Aug 5 statement insinuating Lin and Khelif “identify” instead of being born with their gender is a low blow. Lin is a woman as attested by her mother, three siblings, schoolmates, sparring partners, two Taiwanese presidents, and mentor Coach Tseng Tzu-chiang (曾自強).
Equally pejorative is its assertion that “it can be dangerous for other female boxers” to face Lin and “that we have already seen during the Olympic Games.” The 28-year-old Taiwanese is the more technically proficient athlete thus far, alternating between orthodox and southpaw to win three hard bouts of scrappy matches against opponents from Uzbekistan, Bulgaria, and Turkey.
What went beyond scrappy were the unsportsmanlike behavior of Bulgarian contender Svetlana Staneva and Turkey’s Esra Yildiz Kahraman, who both made an “X” sign with their fingers to imply they were the only women in the boxing ring after losing to Lin. Despite the fact that they were not, their bullying behavior are being copied and championed online.
Against this backdrop of wanton vitriol, Lin had only this to say, to Kahraman who gestured the hateful sign while representing the Turkish nation on the world stage: “I actually admire and respect her; she showed a strong desire to win in the ring. Everyone who gets this far is incredibly strong. I also thank her for competing with me and delivering such a great match that the whole world could see.”
“The opponent is a respectable one.”
ABOUT THOSE AGENDAS
“Taiwan is a part of China,” the IBA chief said on Aug 5. “China is one of my favorite countries.” Indeed, Kremlev toured several Chinese cities in April in hope of bringing more IBA tournaments there and shoring up support for Putin’s Friendship Games. Taiwan is independent of China, however, participating in the Olympics since 1984 as “Chinese Taipei” because of its complex history with Beijing.
The Russian millionaire also has personal beef with an ex-IOC executive official from Taiwan, C.K. Wu (吳經國), who served at the IBA as the same capacity as Kremlev from 2006 to 2017. “Such people must be shot,” he once said of Wu, whose decade-long tenure ended with a lifelong ban from international amateur boxing over corruption and match-fixing scandals. “He is a criminal who was killing boxing.”
Yet the IBA is gifting cash prizes to boxers who lose to Lin and Khelif at the Olympics. The Italian Boxing Association declined the offer after Angela Carini apologized to her Algerian competitor, and the father of Finnish quarterfinalist Pihla Kaivo-oja stated “It is quite clear that Putin’s money is not to be taken.”
The IBA’s unsubstantiated allegations against Lin and Khelif have reached as far as the inner chambers of the United Nations. Two days after the IBA conference in Paris, in addressing the UN General Assembly, Russian Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskly called them “men” in his argument over the Olympic movement being monopolized by western countries to impose an LGBT agenda on the rest of the world.
Just a few years back, Polyanskiy (紀柏梁, Dmitrii Polianskii) was eager to trade with Taiwan during his 2016–18 stint as the Representative of the Moscow-Taipei Coordination Commission on Economic and Cultural Cooperation. “It is just a matter of choice and good-will of the two sides,” he said in 2017.
As the Taiwanese featherweight prepares to fight for gold on Sunday, the IOC remains steadfast on the side of Lin and Khelif. The IBA’s “process is flawed,” its spokesperson Adams explained. “From the conception of the test, to how the test was shared with us, to how the tests have become public, is so flawed that it’s impossible to engage with it.”
Citing President William Lai Ching-te’s directives, Taiwan’s Sports Administration is gathering evidence to construct a legal case against the boxing association.
“We have two boxers who were born as women, who have been raised as women, who have a passport as a woman and who have competed for many years as women,” stated Bach, the IOC’s president and primary target of the IBA chief’s social media videos. “Some want to own a definition of who is a women.”
While Bach warns of a Russia-led defamation campaign against the Olympics, the Associated Press reports that Kremlev ends some of his video shorts “by saying he’s sending Bach diapers so he doesn’t soil himself, then punching the camera.”
Practicing their punches for a different reason are the boxing club members of New Taipei Municipal Yingge Vocational High School and Yingge Junior High School, where Lin was once a student. They hope to follow in her footsteps one day as an athlete, and shine on the Olympic stage.
TAIWAN STATEMENTS
- Le directeur général de l’administration des sports, Cheng Shih-chung, encourage Lin Yu-ting à passer outre les remarques sexistes
- Sports Administration Director-General Cheng Shih-chung Encourages Lin Yu-ting to Rise Above Sexist Remarks
- Joint Paris 2024 Boxing Unit/IOC Statement
- Statement by Chinese Taipei Delegation Paris 2024 — August 4th
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