A Polish Olympic judoka has condemned “any form of hate” towards a Mexican competitor who defeated her at the Paris Olympics. The comments come after two high-profile Polish politicians insinuated that Prisca Awiti Alcaraz, Angelika Szymańska’s opponent, is a man fighting as a woman.
Angelika Szymańska, who won silver in the World Judo Championships in May, was tipped for a medal at the Paris games. However, her loss to Alcaraz in the second round prompted a former deputy foreign minister and a Constitutional Tribunal judge to suggest online that the bout was unfair, claiming that Alcaraz was male.
“This is the ‘sportswoman’ who today beat the Polish representative at judo – and later won an Olympic medal,” Paweł Jbłoński, a deputy foreign minister in the previous government, wrote on X above a picture of Alcaraz. “What do you think about it?” Oskar Szafrowicz, a youth activist of Jbłoński’s party, the socially-conservative Law and Justice (PiS), also published a post on X widely condemned as transphobic.
Krystyna Pawłowicz, a former PiS MP now adjudicating on Poland’s top court, went a step further, posting a picture of Alcaraz next to an image of Algerian female boxer Imane Khelif, who has been accused of being transgender. Pawłowicz described Khelif as “a man identifying as a woman,” adding that the situation would lead to all women’s finals being won by “people who feel like women.”
However, Szymańska herself entered the fray, expressing 100% agreement with a high-profile Catholic radio presenter, Tomasz Terlikowski, who had described the comments about Alcaraz as “just plain embarrassing” and attributed them to stupidity, human hatred, and the lack of boundaries online.
In her response, Szymańska decried “any form of hate against my opponent.” “In her case, any accusations or insinuations are misplaced,” she wrote. “We’ve known each other for years, we train together at international camps and I know that Prisca is a hard-working and determined woman who fully deserved her success yesterday.”
