Strictly star apologises after sharing ‘misinformation' about Olympic boxer Imane Khelif

Strictly Come Dancing star Les Dennis has retracted his criticism of boxer Imane Khelif after she made headlines when her opponent Angela Carini quit just 46 seconds into their Olympics match.

The Algerian athlete was met with a ferocious backlash after her Italian opponent broke down in tears and said she’d “never been hit so hard”.

Khelif was quickly embroiled in a gender row after it was revealed she was one of two stars to fail a testosterone level test at last year’s World Championship.

This sparked a fierce debate about her gender with celebrities including Jake Paul, Piers Morgan, J.K Rowling and former Team GB Olympian Nicola Adams weighing in.

Les was among those to question and spread misinformation about Imane gender, with some wrongly claiming she is trans.

However, the 25-year-old doesn’t identify as either transgender or intersex.

Imane’s father Amar Khelif hit back at the gender row, defended his daughter and produced documents from 1999 which confirmed she was indeed born a female.

As a result, the former Family Fortunes presenter took to X to admit his error and penned: “I apologise for my post [regarding] the women’s boxing at the Olympics.

“Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in misinformation. I’ll make sure I have the facts before I tweet in future.”

The former Coronation Street star had shared a post from former world champion boxer Barry McGuigan that read: "Shocking, dangerous and profoundly unfair on women and girls. IOC (International Olympic Committee) hang your head in shame."

Another tweet had praised Irish boxer Kellie Harrington's public refusal to compete against any "biological males" at the Olympics, that Barry responded to with: "Absolutely right Kellie Harrington, I support you 100%. Women and girls deserve better."

Many fans welcomed Les' apology including @SamCKx who wrote: “Unprecedented. Someone apologising for spreading misinformation on X. Well played, Les, takes a certain strength of character to do this.”

@Damo_C79 echoed: “You've gone up in my estimation Les. It was easy to join on that bandwagon, but much harder to climb back down.”

However, others were still upset with his initial actions as @Zack3O12 fumed: “You’re old enough to know better. It’s truly embarrassing that you did no ounce of research before spreading hatred and misinformation.”

As another user raged: “So easy to jump at the opportunity to spew transphobia and misogyny.”