PARIS (AP) – Not long after the Algerian boxer at the center of a gender stereotype controversy won a gold medal at Paris OlympicsDonald Trump pounced on the performance at a rally more than 7,000 miles away in Bozeman, Montana.

The former president has used the story around Imane Khelif as part of the culture wars raging across America ahead of the November election. Khelif faced one extraordinary review from world leaders, celebrities and social media warriors who questioned her credentials or falsely claimed she was a man.

She won gold Friday night, not long before Trump’s speech in Montana.

“I would like to congratulate the young woman who transitioned from a man to a boxer. If you saw, he won, she won, the gold medal,” Trump said, imitating the Italian boxer who stopped her match against Khelif because she was overwhelmed .

Trump repeatedly mistakenly referred to Khelif as “he.”

There is no such thing as an apolitical Olympics, and that was very clear the dazzling opening ceremony in Paris which offended religious groups and also drew criticism against Trump. And just like that, the two-week sporting spectacle was drawn into the political discourse pulsating across the United States.

It is not a new phenomenon as the link between politics and the Olympics has gone hand in hand dating back to their revival in the late 19th century – optimistically presented as a way for nations to compete without going to war.

“The Olympics are always drawn into political discourse because of the nature of the competition, where nations compete against each other for dominance. This grounding in nationalism means that at its core the Olympics are about nationalism first and athletics second,” said Zein Murib, associate professor of political science at Fordham University.

“In addition, the Olympic Games have been used to tolerate or punish nations, as is the case with Germany in 1936, when the Olympics were held in Nazi Germany despite global protests that it would tolerate the regime, or in 2024 when Russian athletes were excluded because of the invasion of Ukraine.”

For the Paris Games, the International Olympic Committee banned Russian athletes who are in the military or publicly supported the invasion of Ukraine. The IOC also blocked Russians from team sports, while athletics implemented its own blanket ban.

In gymnastics and weightlifting, Russia’s teams skipped qualifying events in protest at being forced to compete as neutrals or to undergo scrutiny, including checks on their social media.

There is 32 “neutral” athletes at these Games, of which 17 previously represented Belarus and 15 represented Russia. They compete under the status of “Individual Neutral Athletes” and were not allowed to participate in the opening ceremony. The Summer Games in Tokyo three years ago had more than 300 Russian athletes.

A political sweep against these games took shape of a video which portrayed Paris as a crime-ridden cesspool and mocked the Olympics. The video quickly spread on social media as 30,000 social media bots linked to an infamous one Russian disinformation group. Within days, the video was available in 13 languages, thanks to fast AI translation.

It was a way for Moscow to assert itself in Paris as groups linked to Russia’s government use online disinformation and state propaganda to attack France. It was proof that global events like the Olympics are now high-profile targets of online disinformation and propaganda.

Murib said the political tension linked to this year’s Olympics is heightened because a coordinated group of “bad actors” has grown significantly and gained enormous global reach over the past decade.

The excitement was high before the start of the games, as high-speed trains in France were disrupted through coordinated arson. Even before the Olympics, French officials said they disrupted several sabotage plots, including the arrest of one Russian man who planned to destabilize the Games

“I think people on all sides of the political spectrum see athletic competition as a barometer of the legitimacy of governing logic, and many will take wins — and losses — as lessons for the viability of democracy or authoritarianism,” Murib said. “We can see this in play in the way Trump immediately weighed in on Imane Khelif’s Olympic eligibility with the far-right line of keeping men out of women’s sports.”

Khelif filed a legal complaint in France for online harassment.

Despite the dramas, these games will be remembered as an overwhelming success. Paris was on full display with breathtaking – and accessible by public transport – venues, star performances by athletes and spectators for the first time since before the 2020 global pandemic.

NBC across all platforms set viewership records as millions tuned in daily despite declarations on social media that individuals were ” boycott “OS either because of” woke up ” dedication ceremony or Khelif.

Paris handed the Olympic flag Sunday night to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who on Monday flew it back to California in preparation for the 2028 Games. Bass and LA 2028 chairman Casey Wasserman have acknowledged that the results of the presidential election in November will have some effect on their game, but is not worried that the winner will create problems for them.

LA 2028 organizers watched the Paris Games closely and know they will be closely watched by the public – both for criticism and praise.

“More than anything, what I’ve learned here, and I give the French team a lot of credit, is that they were willing to do things differently and take chances,” Wasserman said. “That didn’t mean they were all going to be perfect or work, and most of them did, and they’ve been spectacular. But they really thought outside the box and obviously started with the opening ceremony.”

Wasserman said the Paris organizers’ approach has made him step back and ask “how can we do things differently and do things right for our city and our communities?”

“An Olympics is a scary project, and you have to be willing to take chances and swings, big swings,” Wasserman added. “It’s a good lesson for us to really take a very deliberate, thoughtful approach, to take some chances on things that we might not have.”

___

AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games