IIn a unanimous decision, Imane Khelif, from Algeria, won gold in the women’s welterweight, in Paris.
Khelif has fought in and out of the ring as a boxing organization questioned her eligibility to fight in the women’s division, despite having done so for years, including at the Tokyo Olympics, where she finished fifth.
With his victory in Paris, Khelif said “I sent you a single message with this gold medal and I say that my dignity and my honor are above all”.
Khelif’s fight was over in 11 minutes, but it wasn’t so much the skill she showed in the ring or the critical punches she threw against her opponent, Yang Liu of China, that mattered. It was more than that.
It was more than that for Khelif, who, with his mother, sold scrap metal and couscous in their rural village in western Algeria to raise the money he needed to pay for the bus ticket to another village 10 km away to train with a bus. “I’m from a very small village and a very poor family in Algeria,” she said. “I was born and raised in poor neighborhoods, but my family was always proud of me.”
It was more than that for her home-based family, who have been worried about her safety since Khelif became the target of unfounded accusations about whether or not she is a woman; resulting in a storm of opinions and speculation that she ended up calling bullying.
And it was more than that for the thousands of women who filled the Roland Garros court where the fight was held, for whom Khelif became more than an athlete under attack. She has become a symbol of empowerment for women in a country where they have only recently emerged from a social and legal patriarchy.
“She is a role model for women. She was denigrated and that’s why it’s important to support her,” says Sabrina Djemoui, an Algerian who lives in Paris and brought her son to the match. “Algerians came in groups to support her and during the semi-final you could hear shouts of ‘Imane, Imane, Imane’. She represents Algeria and women’s sport.”
Those screams filled the Roland Garros court again during Khelif’s gold medal match. In the last seconds of the third round, Khelif, feeling that he had landed more blows than Yang, began to dance. After being declared gold medalist, Khelif began her now signature dance in the middle of the ring, swinging her legs up and down. “It’s a dance done by my friend and supporter – he’s a football player in Algeria,” she said. “I’m always talking to him in this dance. When he’s playing football he makes the move and when I win so do I [do] the change; that’s it [a message] from me to him, and from him to me too.”
One of her trainers lifted her onto his shoulders and paraded her around the ring, to the delight of the Algerian fans in attendance.
“I am really happy. For eight years this has been my dream and now I am an Olympic champion and gold medalist,” said Khelif. “I’ve been working for eight years and I don’t sleep.”
The legacy of this effort will certainly extend outside the ring. The older women who came to watch her box see her as an important example for future generations, and the younger girls already see her as an inspiration. “She is a woman and she is strong,” says teenager Yuna Amrane, who came wrapped in an Algerian flag. Adni Belhirat, equally decked out to express her pride in her country, agreed. “On social media she was discriminated against and deserves the best,” she says.
Khelif probably never imagined his journey to the Olympics would be so controversial. Last year, the International Boxing Association (IBA), the sport’s international governing body, disqualified Khelif from the world championships, claiming she failed eligibility tests to fight in the women’s division – despite having fought as a woman for years. Neither Khelif nor the IBA provided further details on exactly what these tests were, but the International Olympic Committee (IOC) abandoned sex testing in 1999, recognizing that, biologically, there are no definitive “tests” to conclusively determine sex, since Chromosomes, hormones and genitalia can vary between individuals. The IOC banned the IBA over concerns about the organisation’s funding and governance, and IOC President Thomas Bach has previously warned that the sport risks being excluded from future Olympic Games if reforms are not made.
“I have been boxing under the umbrella of the IBA since 2018 and they know me very well,” she said. “They know what I’m capable of, they know how I’ve developed over the years. But now they are no longer recognized. They hate me and I don’t know why; I really don’t know why.”
Earlier in Paris, Khelif praised Bach for allowing her to compete in Paris despite allegations made by the IBA. “I fully qualified to participate in this competition. I am a woman like any other woman. I was born a woman, I lived as a woman and I competed as a woman,” she said. “There’s no doubt about it.” That hasn’t stopped the IBA from continuing to insist that it failed eligibility tests, including at a press conference the group held in Paris in a failed attempt to justify its decision last year.
Khelif herself described the accusations leveled against her as intimidation. “My message to the entire world is to commit to Olympic principles and avoid bullying; they shouldn’t intimidate people. We are at the Olympics to perform as athletes and for our audience and our families. I hope we don’t see similar attacks at future Olympics.”
Her story highlights how much scrutiny is focused on Olympic athletes and how rumors and lies can get out of control on social media. But her case also illustrates a growing need for more guidance and standardization in the way groups like the IOC make decisions about gender, which would go a long way toward quashing unfounded speculation like that which occurred with Khelif. Eric Vilain, director of the Institute for Clinical and Translational Science at the University of California, Irvine, served on an IOC committee that provided a framework for sports bodies to address issues such as hyperandrogenism, or higher levels of male sex hormones in women. He says that while the IOC’s support for Khelif is critical, they could in future avoid the storm of issues that Khelif faced by being clearer about the criteria they used to allow her to fight in Paris. “Biologically or scientifically it is not possible to arrive at a single definition of sex,” he says. “So I hope [the IOC] comes up with some explanation [for their decision in allowing Khelif to fight] so that we may know how they reasoned.”
This could help set a useful precedent in elite sports so that, in the future, athletes like Khelif are spared the painful attacks that dogged her throughout her Olympic experience. Khelif used the criticism to fuel victory after victory in Paris, culminating in his gold medal fight. “I call them the enemies of success,” Khelif said of his detractors. “And of course this gives a special flavor to my success because of these attacks.”
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
