In the wake of the controversy involving Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting during the Paris Olympics, Claressa Shields wants the question of genuine gender in women’s boxing to be honestly and appropriately addressed.
“T-Rex” want testing on all ladies
Shields commented on the outcry raised by controversial Olympic boxers Khelif and Yu-Ting in an interview with TMZ Sports. For “T-Rex,” this should be a wake-up call for the organizations in charge of overseeing the Olympics and other professional boxing competitions to make sure that all women, regardless of looks, undergo testosterone testing.
“I stand with women should fight against women, men should fight against men, so I think that with this situation, it really needs to be evaluated the right way and I don’t want to put any put out more false information because if you’re born a woman like me, I was born a woman but we all know that my skills and my strength, everything, I worked on naturally,” Shields said.
“I’ve never had my level of testosterone tested, so I just feel like we have to be fair to the women boxers who are being called men because they’re not men and we also need to do a testosterone test of all the women and not just exclude two women because they have an appearance of men,” she added. “…I stand what I said, men fight against men women fight against women, transgenders fight against transgenders.”
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Shields apologizes for her remarks.
In an earlier interview, Shields referred to Khelif and Yu-Ting as “transgenders” before advocating for a mandatory testosterone test. Subsequent reports disclosed that, while they were both female, they have elevated testosterone levels.
“T-Rex,” who was well aware of her error, seized the chance to apologize for her remarks.
““You can’t look at a woman and say ‘Oh, she doesn’t have a high level of testosterone,’ because it can come in all different forms. Your muscles, your face, just inside of you and you look like a petite, beautiful woman, but you have a high level of testosterone… I feel bad now because I did an interview with Fox News earlier where I literally called these two women, transgenders, which that’s what I was told. I wish I would’ve did my research before, because now I couldn’t imagine being at the Olympics, winning these fights, and now I’m seeing all these articles and I’m trending because a two-time Olympic champ just called me a transgender. I just feel really bad about that,” she confided.
Khelif was officially declared the winner after her opponent and Italy’s Angela Carini quit 46 seconds into the opening round. On the other hand, Yu-Ting advanced to the quarterfinals after beating Uzbekistan’s Sitora Turdibekova via decision.
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Both boxers remain at the center of the ongoing controversy for their questionable gender and undisclosed eligibility test results.
Watch Shields full interview below: