ITALIAN BOXER ANGELA Carini has said she “wants to apologise” to Algeria’s Imane Khelif for her actions after the pair’s Olympic boxing match yesterday.

Khelif is one of two boxers who were deemed ineligible to compete at last year’s World Boxing Championships who are competing at the Paris Olympic Games.

Algeria’s Khelif faced Italy’s Angela Carini in the women’s 66kg category yesterday.

The Algerian dispatched Carini within 46 seconds of their match, when the Italian boxer threw in the towel. 

Carini refused to shake Khelif’s hand and dropped to her knees in tears after the fight.

After the fight, Carini said: “I have a big pain in my nose and I said, ‘Stop’. It’s better to avoid keeping going. My nose started dripping (with blood) from the first hit.”

She added: “I fought very often in the national team. I train with my brother. I’ve always fought against men, but I felt too much pain today.”

However, Carini today told Italian daily newspaper Gazzetta that “all this controversy makes me sad”.

Carini added that she is “sad for my opponent” and remarked: “If the IOC said she can fight, I respect that decision.”

And while Carini stood by her decision to abandon the fight, she said that refusing to shake hands with Khelif “was not something I intended to do”.

“I want to apologise to her and everyone else. I was angry because my Olympics had gone up in smoke,” said Carini.

Meanwhile, Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting was also in boxing action this afternoon in the women’s 57kg category and she defeated Uzbekistani boxer Sitora Turdibekova.

Both Khelif and Lin were disqualified from the 2023 World Championships in New Delhi, which was run by the International Boxing Association (IBA).

Khelif was disqualified hours before her gold-medal fight, while Lin was stripped of her bronze.

The IBA released a statement this week which said the disqualification of Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting was a “result of their failure to meet the eligibility criteria for participating in the women’s competition”.

However, the IBA has been mired in controversy in recent years and no longer has a role in boxing events at the Olympic Games.

The International Olympic Council (IOC) is therefore running boxing events in the Paris Games, as it did for the Tokyo Games.

The IOC rules include the need for boxers to have a “medical certificate duly stamped and signed by relevant medical authority within the previous three months”.

Both Khelif and Lin Yu-ting competed at the Tokyo Games three years ago without controversy.

The IOC said yesterday that the “current aggression against these two athletes is based entirely on this arbitrary decision, which was taken without any proper procedure” by the IBA.

IOC spokesperson Mark Adams also told reporters this week that “everyone competing in the women’s category… is complying with competition eligibility rules”.