This story is likely to get lost in the shuffle of this week’s election stories. However, it’s an important one for those of us championing women’s rights in sports.

This past summer during the Paris Olympics, we were all told to shut up about a certain “female” welterweight boxer named Imane Khelif, who had failed a testosterone-level check and was excluded from the most recent International Boxing World Championships. He was permitted to box in the Olympics anyway because that particular sport’s International Olympic Committee (IOC) rules only needed the passport to say female for Khelif to compete. Khelif went on to knock out all the welterweight competitors and win the gold medal.

What caught the media’s attention was when he boxed against Italy’s Angela Carini, who lasted 46 seconds and suffered one really hard hit. She left the ring in tears.

Left-wing media outlets immediately jumped all over Carini and anyone who dared to say that Khelif is the perfect example of why men shouldn’t be allowed to compete in women’s sports. Vogue did an entire puff piece on Khelif, and the Associated Press declared that calling him a man was disinformation. Algeria even accused naysayers of only wanting to stop an Arab woman from succeeding.

Because of how this controversy blew up, Khelif was turned into an LGBTQ+ hero. He went on to hobnob with celebrities at Milan’s fashion week and was even on the cover of Vogue Arabia.

Enter French journalist Djaffar Air Aoudia, who has just broken a story about acquired medical records that confirm Khelif’s maleness. Reduxx published the findings on Monday. Surprise, surprise (or not, if you have any common sense), Khelif is a man with XY chromosomes but has a rare malformation known as 5-alpha reductase deficiency. This is a condition that only affects biological males. Khelif has no uterus; he does have male genitalia, though the testicles are internal. More to the point, Khelif would have all the same physical advantages that other men have.

But here’s the kicker: This information was being documented as early as the summer of 2023. According to Reduxx, “The report was drafted in June of 2023 via a collaboration between the Kremlin-Bicêtre hospital in Paris, France, and the Mohamed Lamine Debaghine hospital in Algiers, Algeria.” The Algerian government knew Khelif was a man and helped hide it.

Khelif was allowed by the IOC to beat up women and take a gold medal from them. It’s sanctioned bullying. No wonder Carini said after being pummeled by Khelif that she’d “never felt a punch like [it] in my life.”

What should the IOC do now? We’re well past the Olympics, America is in the midst of a presidential election, and the world’s eyes are elsewhere. If there was any justice in this world, Khelif would be stripped of his gold medal and it would be given to China’s Yang Liu. Frankly, though, because it’s the IOC, nothing will probably be done. It’ll take advantage of the world’s distraction and allow this injustice to pass.

If that’s the case, perhaps a reckoning is in order.