Algerian boxer Imane Khelif's next opponent Luca Hamori shares picture showing a HORNED BEAST in a ring with female fighter - as Hungarian Boxing Association protest with Olympics chiefs on eve of bout

Luca Hamori, the Hungarian set to face gender row fighter Imane Khelif on Saturday, has shared a picture which depicts a female boxer facing a horned beast in a ring.

On a day when the furore continued to dominate the Olympics - with victory for the second boxer who was banned from a previous competition for failing a gender test - the Hungarian Boxing Association protested to Games bosses and its own Olympic committee over the prospect of the bout.

Hamori has said she is ‘not scared’ of her opponent and claimed Italy’s Angela Carini ‘gave up’ when she quit her bout with Khelif after 46 seconds on Thursday.

And the 23-year-old took to Instagram to repost an image which showed an image of a long-haired, slight woman in blue shorts facing off with a muscle-bound creature in red who towers over her underneath the Olympic rings.

‘If she or he is a man, it will be a bigger victory for me if I win,’ Hamori had earlier said of Khelif, who was disqualified from last year’s World Championships after failing a gender test according to the officials from the then governing body IBA. 

‘So let’s do it. I can’t wait for that fight. In my club at home I have only guys and male team-mates. It’s not new for me.’

Lajos Berko, a member of the HBA board, told a Hungarian broadcaster of the protest and said the association was also considering legally challenging Khelif’s presence. ‘I am very sad that there is a scandal and that we have to talk about a topic that is not compatible with sport,’ he said. ‘This is unacceptable and outrageous.’

In the same ring which had a day earlier witnessed Carini’s tearful early exit, Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, who was also thrown out of the World Championships, cruised into the quarter-finals after dominating her Uzbekistan opponent.

The Taiwanese featherweight, 28, secured a unanimous decision over Sitora Turdibekova before refusing, along with her opponent, to speak to reporters.

The IBA, which has been stripped of its right to regulate Olympic boxing thanks to governance concerns, ruled both failed unspecified gender tests but have provided no documentation.

Elsewhere, culture secretary Lisa Nandy said it was ‘incredibly uncomfortable’ to watch Khelif’s fight and added that she would be speaking to sporting bodies about ‘inclusion, fairness and safety’.

Outspoken former US president Donald Trump vowed to ‘keep men out of women’s sports’ while Britain’s most successful female boxer of all time, claimed the situation was ‘unfair’ and ‘dangerous’.

Elsewhere, the IOC – which stripped the IBA of the right to run boxing at the Games over governance issues – hit out at the condemnation. Spokesperson Mark Adams said the IBA’s decision to remove the pair last year was taken ‘arbitrarily’ and said that Khelif ‘was born female, was registered female, lived her life as a female, boxed as a female and has a female passport’. He added: ‘There has been some confusion that somehow it’s a man fighting a woman. This is just not the case scientifically.’

Adams also queried the IBA’s testing. ‘We don’t know if the test was accurate,’ he said. ‘We don’t know whether we should believe the test.’

Meanwhile, Carini said on Friday that she ‘wants to apologise’ to Khelif.

‘All this controversy makes me sad,’ she told Gazzetta dello Sport. ‘I'm sorry for my opponent, too. If the IOC said she can fight, I respect that decision.’

Carini, 25, also expressed regret at not shaking hands with Khelif afterwards.

‘It wasn't something I intended to do,’ she said. ‘Actually, I want to apologise to her and everyone else. I was angry because my Olympics had gone up in smoke.’

She added that if she met Khelif again, she would ‘embrace her’.