Allowing the gender row boxers to compete is dangerously wrong, but the ignorant charlatans who exploit them for their cause are even worse

Allowing the gender row boxers to compete is dangerously wrong, but the ignorant charlatans who exploit them for their cause are even worse Gender row boxers being allowed to compete at the Olympics is wrong By Oliver Holt Published: 02:00, 6 August 2024 | Updated: 02:00, 6 August 2024 e-mail View comments Amid all the joy and exultation of the Paris Olympics , amid the beauty and the splendour, a tragedy is playing out in front of our eyes here, too. On Sunday morning at the Parc des Expositions, not far from Charles de Gaulle Airport, they staged its second act. A boxing ring sat in the middle of a stark hall in an exhibition centre and as the preamble got under way, a man wearing a bowler hat and a oversized false moustache led the communal singing of Champs Elysees, a song for the carefree.

They cranked up the playlist after that and did their clever trick of making it appear that athletes from the 1924 Paris Olympics, pictured on the big screen in sepia or black and white, were singing modern hits. Highway to Hell is one of the favourites. After they played ‘I Will Survive’, Lin Yu-ting , a 28-year-old featherweight from Taiwan , was accompanied into the arena by three coaches and climbed eagerly through the ropes.

For some, that square of canvas is a place to fight. For Lin, it has become a place to escape. It is hard to know where to start with the furore that has enveloped Lin and Algerian welterweight Imane Khelif at these Olympics other than to say that the sanc.