When Laura Woods entered the battle between the sexes involving the 2024 Olympic Games, she couldn’t fathom her fear of being canceled. What attracted worldwide attention was Algeria’s Imane Kherif’s appearance and subsequent gold medal in the women’s welterweight boxing competition held in Paris last year.
The 26-year-old, along with China’s Lin Yuting, was disqualified from competing in world championships a year ago by the discredited Russian-backed International Boxing Association (IBA), which claimed blood test findings proved they were unfit to compete against women. However, the organization provided no documented evidence of the results. The test results were later deemed unreliable by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which allowed the pair to compete in the Olympics.
The TNT Sports presenter took to social media amid the controversy and publicly praised a Telegraph article that claimed biological women were put at risk by the IOC’s decision to allow Kerif and Lin, who had previously been unfairly identified as transgender, to compete at the Paris Games. More than a year after co-signing the published work, she said: to He revealed that he was worried that he would be canceled if he spoke out in the newspaper.
“I remember almost screaming inside because it felt like this injustice was happening right in front of our eyes,” Woods, 38, said. “I was so angry that everyone who tried to talk about it openly was gaslighted into thinking that what they were saying was wrong.”
“It still pisses me off. There was so much sympathy for Kerif and no sympathy for the women around that player. It felt so disproportionate. I couldn’t believe that even questioning it out loud was enough to warrant cancellation.”
Since Kerif defeated Yan Liu in last year’s final, the Algerian has vowed to compete at the 2028 Los Angeles Games, despite President Donald Trump’s pledge to ban men from women’s sports. The US leader even falsely suggested that Mr Herif was born male, prompting a response from the boxer earlier this year.
Kerif told ITV Sport: “The president of the United States has made a decision about transgender policy in the United States. I’m not transgender. This doesn’t concern me and I’m not threatening you. That’s my reaction.” She admitted that the intense scrutiny she faced last year took a mental and emotional toll on her.
“I was very affected mentally and was disappointed, but I remained aware of what was happening,” she added. “During the Paris Olympics, I had a team of dedicated doctors who supported and helped me. Without their support, I might have fallen into a spiral of depression.”
