At the height of the liquid society – where inclusivity is encouraged even in the bathroom with gender fluid toilets and cancel culture turns Snow White black – sports seemed to be the only free zone. The exasperation of political correctness, however, has arrived here too and the Paris Olympics are a clear example.

Leaving aside the controversy over the opening ceremony, with the drag queen version of The Last Supper – which for the organizers was the dinner of Dionysus but they still accepted the ‘risk’ of blasphemous misunderstanding to wink at the lgbtq+ community – the lectio magistralis was made by the IOC (International Olympic Committee), which allowed the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif – excluded last year from the World Championships in New Delhi by the International Boxing Association (Iba) for having too high a level of testosterone – to compete in the Games in the women’s category. Khelif is not transgender – and transsexuality in sport is another issue, long-standing and much debated – but a hyperandrogynous woman, that is, capable of producing levels of testosterone higher than what the female body can normally do, causing the development of some male characteristics. Among these, obviously, physical prowess. Translated, having an XY genotype, her structure is genetically male, and yet here she is in the ring against any “discrimination” – according to wicked logic – when the priority in such important competitions should be the protection of the athletes, in addition to fairness.

The problem is here and the opposing positions of two scientific committees, just one year apart, do nothing but support the hypothesis that the Olympic decision is entirely ideological. The evaluations of the tests for determining the sex to which athletes are subjected should be rigid and rigorously homogeneous, especially in a sport like boxing, where safety is a must and certain characteristics can make the difference, if not even prove fatal. Angela Carini knows this well, having withdrawn after 45 seconds (and a media storm that continued for 24 hours before the match), cornered by two punches from the Algerian which – as we read from the lips of the Italian towards the coach – “hurts a lot”. Statement made by an athlete with a hundred matches under her belt, two world championships, a European championship and the last Tokyo Olympics, therefore, roughly speaking, someone who knows how to take a beating and not exactly a novice who “thinks she’s playing chess”, as some venomous commentator of the last hour sarcastically writes on social media. Physical inferiority, fear, psychological pressure, whatever the real reason that led Angela Carini to abandon the ring, it is certain that this would never have happened if it had been a fair competition, free of controversy and ethical disquisitions, typical of objectively equivocal contexts.

That “it’s not fair” said to the coach before the announcement of her opponent as the winner, says it all. Above all, it says much more than the diplomatic statements released shortly after to journalists, when she was careful not to give any judgment on the IOC’s decision and on her rival, avoiding criticism and judgments from the same part of the world for which certain battles devoid of common sense and steeped in hypocrisy are carried on. And so sport goes KO.