Editorial: Gold medal for competitor who was previously rejected as a woman mars the success of the 2024 Olympics

​An Olympic women's boxing gold winner has secured the triumph a year after being disqualified from the World Championships for reportedly failing a gender eligibility test.

​The victory by Imane Khelif has been a cloud over an otherwise successful Olympics.

The vast international multi-sport games will come to an end this weekend. So much of it has been a joy to behold.

Northern Ireland athletes have had unprecedented success and we hope that there will be a parade for them in Belfast, as suggested by the former Ireland rugby international and reconciliation campaigner Trevor Ringland in our story on page three (click here to read it).

Other countries will be celebrating after the Olympics too. Team GB and NI has had an impressive overall medal tally, one of its best. This is to a significant extent a result of the money that was pumped into good causes, notably athletics, after the introduction of the National Lottery in the UK in the 1990s made available a lot of money for athletics and other Olympic sports.

But the boxing success of the Algerian Khelif in the welterweight division was a serious black mark on the games. Khelif is not to blame for this. The problem is a confused approach to gender.

If a competitor has the physical attributes of a man, such that they are so much stronger than their other woman competitor as to be a danger, it is deeply unjust.

As this column observed recently, it is a threat to the very concept of women’s sports categories.

Trans issues are of course politically and culturally and socially complicated for society at large, let alone in sport. As are the challenges thrown up by a tiny, tiny percentage of the population that is born with male and female characteristics.

But these challenges and sensitivities cannot be allowed to ruin the concept of women’s sport categories, that were devised because women cannot compete fairly with stronger men.