Algerian boxer Imane Khelif is returning home with the gold medal after winning the women’s welterweight boxing tournament at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Khelif was at the center of controversy in Paris after being wrongly labeled as a man or transgender by some.
After winning the gold, Imane Khelif had a message to the International Boxing Association, which helped spark the controversy by suspending Khelif from last year’s world championships after it said she failed eligibility tests.
“As for the IBA, since 2018 I have been boxing under the umbrella of the IBA, they know me very well, they know how I’ve developed over the years, but now they are not recognized anymore, and they hate me, and I don’t know why,” Imane Khelif said, per the Toronto Star . “I really don’t know why. I sent them a single message with this gold medal: I say that my dignity, my honour, is above everything else.”
Khelif faced China’s Yang Liu in the gold medal bout, winning all three rounds. Khelif managed to outfox Liu and land enough blows on the Chinese boxer, who preferred to try and dance around the ring.
Liu entered the Olympics as the reigning world champion, winning the tournament that Khelif had been disqualified from the year prior.
Khelif reiterated after the victory that she did nothing wrong and had every right to take part in the Olympics.
“As for whether I qualify or not, or whether I am a woman or not, I am fully qualified to take part in this competition,” she said afterward, through an interpreter, per the Toronto Star.
“I am a woman like any other woman. I was a born a woman, I’ve lived as a woman, I’ve competed as a woman. There is no doubt about that. There are enemies of my success. That is what I call them. That also gives my success a special taste because of these attacks.”
Outrage was first sparked when Khelif’s first opponent, Italian boxer Angela Carini , withdrew and forfeited her match against Khelif after 46 seconds. Carini’s emotional postgame remarks were then used as ammunition for posters on social media and writers to decry that the Italian was forced to face, what many of the critics said, without any factual proof, was a man. Khelif is not transgender, and has identified as a woman since birth. Her passport — the document used to determine her eligibility — reflects as much.
The IOC issued a statement confirming the Algerian is eligible to compete and Carini even apologized to Khelif for how her emotional post-match remarks were weaponized.
That didn’t stop the outrage, though, as another of Khelif’s opponents — Hungary’s Anna Luca Hamori — shared a number of vitriol-filled Instagram stories and a TikTok. Khelif defeated Hamori in their match on scoring.
Imane Khelif said following Friday’s win that the attacks were tough to hear, but she is proud to come away with the gold medal.
“Yes, my honour is intact now,” she said, per the Toronto Star. “But the attacks that I heard in social media were extremely bad, and they are meaningless, and they impact the dignity of people, and I think now people’s thinking has changed.”
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