IOC inaction left Olympic women's boxers to fight for themselves, Khalif and Lin among them

As the pink evening skies turned burned orange last Sunday the cauldron took its last breath; it was finally over for Paris.

A couple of weeks where the world’s best lit up a beautiful stage with super human feats and life-affirming stories all complimented by the widest of smiles or inconsolable tears.

Paris was the required antidote to the soulless Tokyo Games, which played out during the pandemic in front of empty stadia.

The start was not promising; an attack of the city’s train system caused chaos and prompted immediate fears the Games were in for a targeted campaign of disruption.

The ambitious opening ceremony, the first staged outside a stadium, divided opinion but technically they pulled it off, despite some atrocious weather on the night.

That soaking also pushed up levels of pollution in the Seine, which had cost three billion euros to get ‘Games ready’ and caused triathlon training to be cancelled after water samples revealed levels of E-Coli that were a risk to athletes’ health.

But when the sun showed its face so did the spectators, in record numbers. Stands at every event, whether the established sports or the newcomers, were rammed.

And France exploited its beauty with temporary venues in the shadow of most of its breathtaking landmarks.

As an exercise in sustainability goes it was a triumph, proving that you don’t need to spend millions on new, permanent structures to stage a Games. What beats beach volleyball underneath the Eiffel tower?

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As always though, there was controversy.

Britain’s Olympic equestrian legend Charlotte du Jardin was banished in disgrace, after a video emerged of her whipping a horse repeatedly and unnecessarily.

A dozen or so of the 23 Chinese swimmers who failed doping tests ahead of the last Olympics - and then were all secretly cleared - were in France.

We discovered that the World Anti Doping Agency had accepted what, from the outside, looked like a dubious explanation of how the contamination occurred.

There was the Dutch beach volleyball player Steven van de Velde, a convicted child rapist, chosen by the Netherlands to represent his country in Paris.

Countless women survivors of sex abuse will no doubt have been re-traumatised, not only by his presence but by the near nonchalance in which it was accepted. Yes, he was booed, but van de Velde shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

But then there was the issue that consumed more attention than all the above combined; the gender eligibility row in women’s boxing.

It’s a complex subject but the fall-out has been anything but. If you’ve been getting your information from social media, then the majority of it will have been misguided and probably toxic too.

This issue rarely encourages nuanced discussion; just right or wrong.

In brief, Algeria’s Imane Khalif and Lin Yu-Ting from Chinese Taipei were kicked out of the World Championships last year following blood tests.

The organisers, the discredited International Boxing Association, claimed in a chaotic and hastily arranged media conference during the Games that those tests revealed the women were actually biologically male.

At the time of the tests the IBA wrote to the International Olympic Committee to outline developments.

One of the big problems here is that very few people actually know the exact details of those tests or the specific findings, which of course are critical to any meaningful discussion. But that lack of evidence still doesn’t stop the grandstanding from an army of self-appointed experts.

Yet also, in a way, none of the above is the point.

Having been informed, the IOC did nothing to head off a crisis that it should have seen coming. And its inaction not only threw the two boxers to the online wolves, but also probably ruined the Games experience for many other athletes; namely their opponents.

Some will argue it might even have exposed them to harm. Khelif has since filed an official complaint against Elon Musk and JK Rowling among others, with Paris prosecutors claiming "aggravated online harassment".

It’s not a good Olympic look when, on a couple of occasions, women fighters made ‘X’ chromosome signs in the ring at the end of a bout to show they believed they’ve just been beaten by a man. It is a blueprint of how not to manage a delicate situation.

Despite Khalif and Lin’s gold medals, nobody has really won here; least of all the IOC and its reputation.

Sport needs to learn from this.

Yes, it has a responsibility to find that balance of fairness and inclusion, but most of all it has a responsibility for the mental well-being of every single athlete. And that of course includes Khalif and Lin who have both lived as women since birth.

All actors in this sorry boxing saga have effectively been left to fight for themselves, and that is simply nowhere near good enough.

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