Fact check: Trump repeats lie that champion Olympic women’s boxers ‘transitioned’

Washington (CNN) — Before signing an executive order Wednesday to try to ban transgender women from competing in women’s sports in schools and other settings, President Donald Trump repeated a lie he told last year. He asserted that two Olympians who won gold in women’s boxing events in 2024 were men who “transitioned.”

“Who could forget last year’s Paris Olympics, where a male boxer stole the women’s gold medal after brutalizing his female opponent so viciously that she had to forfeit just after 46 seconds, and she was a championship fighter. And actually they had two women, or two people, that transitioned, and both of them won gold medals, and they won them very convincingly,” Trump said.

Facts First: Trump’s claims are not true. These two Olympic champions, welterweight gold medalist Imane Khelif of Algeria and featherweight gold medalist Lin Yu‑ting of Taiwan, never “transitioned.” Both were identified as female at birth and have always competed as women.

Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, said last year: “We have two boxers who are born as a woman, who have been raised a woman, who have a passport as a woman, and who have competed for many years as women. And this is the clear definition of a woman. There was never any doubt about them being a woman.”

In addition to the International Olympic Committee, Khelif herself and her father noted last year that Khelif was born and raised as female and had always competed as a woman. Taiwan News reported that Lin was registered as a female at birth and had participated in female boxing events since middle school.

Before their triumphs in the Olympics, Khelif and Lin were disqualified in 2023 from the world championships held by the International Boxing Association – an organization with extensive ties to the Russian government that was stripped of official recognition by the International Olympic Committee for a variety of problems, including a history of corruption. The authority has claimed that a gender eligibility test showed Khelif and Lin had “competitive advantages over other female competitors,” but it has never substantiated this assertion.

Regardless of the merits of the 2023 disqualifications, there is simply no basis for claiming Khelif and Lin “transitioned.”

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