Algiers, Algeria – Born in a poor village, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif has overcome numerous obstacles throughout her life to win a controversial Paris Olympics gold on Friday.
Sporting braided hair and standing strong at 1.79 metres (5ft 9in), the 25-year-old has unwittingly become one of the central figures of the Games.
Along with Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, she was disqualified from last year’s world championships after failing gender eligibility testing, only to be cleared to compete in the French capital.
Khelif was born in a village 300 kilometres (180 miles) from the Algerian capital Algiers.
From a family of limited means, she spoke before the Games of the difficulty of her life in “a village of conservative people” in semi-desert surroundings.
“I came from a conservative family. Boxing is not a widely practised sport by women, especially in Algeria,” she told Canal Algerie a month before the Games, smiling readily and her voice soft.
“It was difficult.”
A strong athlete, she played football with the boys in her village of Biban Mesbah, but beating them in matches brought on brawls where she fought back with punches.
These fights ultimately led her to boxing, and on Friday one of the most contentious gold medals in recent memory.
In an interview with UNICEF, she said she used to sell scrap metal and her mother sold homemade couscous to pay for bus tickets to a nearby town.
Imane’s father Omar at first did not approve of her decision to pursue boxing, but he eventually became one of her biggest fans.
The unemployed welder previously told AFP that his daughter is “an example of the Algerian woman”, praising also her dedication to training.
‘Brave girl’
In 2022, Khelif told the Algerian news agency APS that she had considered giving up boxing “because my family did not accept the idea and because of how society looked at me, considering that I was doing something wrong”.
“But all these barriers made me even stronger and were an extra motivation to achieve my dreams.”
She also expressed her determination in an interview on the UNICEF website, where she said her “dream is to win a gold medal”.
“If I win, mothers and fathers will be able to see how far their children can go,” she said. “I want to inspire girls and children in Algeria.”
Khelif’s international career took off with her participation at the Covid-delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021, where she came fifth in her weight class.
In 2023 she made it to the semi-finals of the world championships in New Delhi.
But then she was disqualified following gender eligibility testing by the International Boxing Association, which is not recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and is not running the sport in Paris.
She initially appealed but then withdrew her complaint, according to the IBA.
There is no suggestion that Khelif identifies as anything other than a woman.
Her father showed identity documents and her birth certificate to AFP and, having been sceptical about her boxing career when she was young, hailed her as “a heroine”.
“My child is a girl,” Omar Khelif said. “She was raised as a girl. She is a strong girl — I raised her to work and be brave.”