Episode 3011: Gold For Skibbereen, Irish Boxing’s Poor Olympics, Misinformation In The Ring

On a still lake on the edge of Paris, Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy rowed themselves into Irish Sporting immortality. This Olympics is shaping up to be the greatest ever for Ireland while Paul can now lay claim to being Ireland’s greatest Olympian; not that he will.

©INPHO/Morgan Treacy

We speak to the man who originally wrote the book on whatever’s in the water in Skibbereen, The Southern Star sports editor, Kieran McCarthy.

©INPHO/James Crombie

And while the Olympics has been full of feel good moments and positive news stories, the event that has most caught the world’s attention was the sudden end to a preliminary round-of-16 bout between the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and Angela Carini, with Carini insisting she could not fight on, claiming she was in “extreme pain” and had “never felt a punch like this”.

The background to the fight was that Khelif, who has born female and has always fought as a woman and was beaten by Kellie Harrington at the last Olympics, was disqualified from last year’s Women’s World Boxing Championships (as was Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting) for failing to meet the International Boxing Agency’s gender eligibility criteria, though the IBA failed to give detail on what tests were done and what criteria were not met.

After the fight the social media storm included contributions from journalists, fans, JK Rowling, JD Vance and Donald Trump. We talk to Gavan Casey of the42 about this latest gender controversy in women’s sport, the IBA’s less than transparent dealings in this and other matters, the Russian who runs the IBA, the misinformation and wrong assumptions being made by many, the importance of appearances, the social media fuel on the fire, and the fighters caught in the middle of it all.

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