No evidence Imane Khelif stripped of ‘all medals’ | Fact check

A Sept. 23 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows two images of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and an image of International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach.
“Imane Khelif Gets Life Ban After Wbo Declares Him A Man, Loses All Medals And $25m Prize,” reads the post’s caption. “’DECISION HAS BEEN MADE’”
The post was shared more than 5,000 times in a week.
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No credible reports support the post’s claim that Khelif has been banned from boxing and stripped of her medals. There is no evidence of such an announcement from the World Boxing Organization
Khelif won a gold medal in women’s boxing at the Paris Olympics amid a gender-eligibility controversy that led to pervasive online harassment despite reassurance from officials that all the athletes taking part in boxing complied “with the competition’s eligibility and entry regulations, as well as all applicable medical regulations.”
Bach, speaking at an Aug. 3 press conference, said there has never been any doubt that Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting are women. He urged “really everyone to respect these women, to respect them as women, as human beings.”
Khelif later filed a complaint with the Paris public prosecutor’s office for “acts of aggravated cyber harassment.”
There is no evidence to support the post’s claim that Khelif has since been banned from boxing and stripped of all her medals. In the first comment, the social media user who created the post links to an article that repeats the claim but provides no evidence to support it.
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The post refers to the World Boxing Organization, but no such announcement appears on its website or social media accounts. Khelif also hasn’t mentioned anything about such a ban on her Instagram account. Khelif’s victory in the Paris Olympics generated widespread media coverage, yet no credible news reports support the post’s claim.
The World Boxing Organization did not respond to a request for comment.
The Russian-backed International Boxing Association stripped Khelif of a bronze medal she won at the 2023 World Championships after she allegedly failed gender-eligibility tests, but the IOC and others have raised concerns about the integrity of those tests, as USA TODAY previously reported. The IBA oversaw Olympic boxing before the IOC stripped it of the right before the Tokyo Games in 2021. As a result, the IOC organized the boxing tournaments, including the qualification process, at the Tokyo Games and, more recently, at the Paris Games
The IOC has stripped athletes of Olympic medals in the past. For example, 10 athletes lost medals from the 2008 Beijing Olympics after banned substances showed up in retests of samples from those Games, the Associated Press reported. But nothing resembling the Facebook claim appears on the IOC website, and Khelif is still listed as a gold medalist on the Paris 2024 website.
The Facebook post also references Khelif losing a $25 million prize, but there’s no evidence she ever received – much less lost – an award of that amount.
USA TODAY has debunked other false claims about Khelif, including that she was disqualified from the Paris Olympics and that she was featured on a ‘Vogue Algeria’ cover.
USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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