MOSCOW, August 2. /TASS/. The Olympic Games have become a platform for promoting liberal ideals that border on the extreme, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday commenting on a boxing match between a female athlete and a transgender boxer.
Peskov’s comment to journalists at a news briefing comes in the wake of the controversial women’s boxing bout at the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in France between Italian fighter Angela Carini and Algeria’s Imane Khelif, who earlier failed an unspecified gender eligibility test, but was nevertheless cleared to compete at the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
"I did not watch the fight and, to be honest, I had no particular desire to watch it," Peskov said.
He lamented that "the international Olympic Movement is losing face, becoming a victim of these pseudo-liberal manifestations, which sometimes border on perversion."
"We would definitely still prefer to see the good old International Olympic Committee with the good old ideals of Olympism and the classical Olympic worldview, in which Russian athletes also played a significant role," he continued.
"However, these times are, unfortunately, long gone," Peskov added.
On Thursday, in the women’s under-66 kg boxing event at the Olympics, Khelif needed only 46 seconds to dispatch her opponent, Italy’s Carini, who withdrew from the fight with a nasal injury.
Associated Press news agency reported later quoting Carini as saying after the fight in an interview with Gazzetta dello Sport daily that: "My face and nose were hurting."
"I couldn’t breathe anymore. I thought about my family, I looked at my brother in the stands and I went to my corner to retire. … I’ve never been hit with such a powerful punch," Carini stated.
"All this controversy makes me sad… I’m sorry for my opponent, too. … If the IOC said she can fight, I respect that decision," the Italian Olympic boxer added.
The 2024 Summer Olympic Games are hosted by the French capital of Paris between July 26 and August 11.