Sports

So this is an interview with someone who t was involved with her through a network of other staff who were modernizing her boxing regimen as she had been training from a holistic, intuitive approach in Algeria prior to her arrival in France where she would go on to be working with a gym in Tarbes and another in Nice.

Some relevant Google translated portions of the interview:

Q: She discovers it at that moment…

A: Yes, and me too, even if she has a rather particular morphotype. The fact remains that people have a particular physical appearance, it is so different inside themselves. For Imane, she was born a girl. She was raised as a girl. She has a girl's sensitivity. On that basis, why wouldn't we test everyone who has superior abilities to others? For example, the immense French basketball player Victor Wembanyama, in terms of his growth hormones? It's stupid. Everyone is different, fortunately, otherwise there would be no competition. Let's put ourselves in a performance perspective: what is competition? It's a subject, a man or a woman, who is superior to others.

Q: The Algerian team didn't know anything either?

A: They are 50,000 leagues away from these biological aspects. They were happy to have a good boxer. She is a young woman, I repeat, who was raised like a girl.

Q: What happens after this thunderclap announcement?

A: After the 2023 World Championships, where she was disqualified, I took the lead by contacting a renowned endocrinologist from the Parisian University Hospital, Kremlin-Bicêtre, who examined her. He confirmed that Imane is indeed a woman, despite her karyotype and her testosterone level. He said: "There is a problem with her hormones, with her chromosomes, but she is a woman." That's all that mattered to us. We then worked with a doctor based in Algeria to monitor and regulate Imane's testosterone level, which is currently within the female norm. Tests clearly show that all her muscular and other qualities have been diminishing since then. Currently, she can be compared on a muscular and biological level to a woman-woman-woman (Fr: et au niveau biologique à une femme-femme-femme).

Q: Regarding this rate, did you follow a recommendation from the International Olympic Committee?

A: I was so disappointed to see her stupidly disqualified at the world championships in New Delhi that I wanted to take the lead. But in hindsight, I wonder if I was wrong to get involved in this… The Olympic Games medical commission had made a lot of publicity around the training of its samplers to judge, among other things, the testosterone level of the athletes competing in the Games. So I wanted us to put all the chances on her side, and for her level to be within the required limits.

Q: Some say that XY profiles display a physical, muscular superiority over XX.

A: It is said that everyone should do sports. Everyone, except these people? Some say that we should make special categories, but even within a group of hypoandrogenic or hyperandrogenic people, there are differences between them. There is such a significant variation that we cannot make categories.

Q: I ask the same question to the biology teacher that you are…

A: Between boys and girls, it is at puberty, in terms of performance, that there is a dissociation linked to testosterone. Testosterone is an anabolic hormone and therefore one that builds muscles. This explains why boys are stronger than girls in terms of muscle. My answer is hesitant, because some women display a muscular quality close to that of men. And performance is the interaction of multiple components, including physical aspects. In some sports, physical aspects play an important role in performance. You will never see skinny boxers, whether they are men or women.

Q: Did you watch the IBA press conference that took place during the Olympics?

A: No, I didn't want to rekindle my anger. There are a lot of things that could be said about the IBA. Its head is a strange bird. He doesn't want the IOC to get involved in boxing... All I know is that the IBA ended up justifying itself after the fact. If they had warned us before the 2023 World Championships, we would have been vigilant. They made Imane eligible for her first three matches, then ineligible for the final. They sent her a letter in English when she can't read that language, asking her to sign it to get her results. She should never have signed that letter.

Q: What does this imply?

A: That she acknowledged the disqualification… Everything was spun in a funny way in New Delhi during these Worlds.

Q: What are these IBA results about? A karyotype? Testosterone levels?

A: From what I read, during its recent press conference, the IBA did not wish to go into detail or reveal the nature of the tests carried out, so it is better to stick to the IOC's position, which confirmed the eligibility of Imane as well as that of the Taiwanese also disqualified by the IBA in New Delhi in March 2023.

That is every relevant and every not-so-relevant excerpt from the article.

Here is the full French article via archive.is.