Crowds in Tiaret, a rural city of 200,000 in Algeria’s high desert plateau, exploded in celebration Friday night to welcome back Imane Khelif, the welterweight boxer who won an Olympic gold medal while fighting off an international storm of lies, online abuse and uninformed speculation that called into question her eligibility to compete.
Standing in an open-top bus inching its way through a mass of jubilant fans, Khelif waved and posed for pictures alongside track athlete and bronze medalist Djamel Sedjati, also from Tiaret.
Videos of the parade posted on X show crowds dancing to music while gleefully tossing rifles into the air, and families gathered on balconies waving replica gold medals while snapping photos of Khelif, the 25-year-old daughter of a welder who rose to the highest echelons of her sport. Children sat on shoulders and one man was filmed climbing a tree to catch a glimpse of her.
After Khelif’s dominant first-round victory over Italian boxer Angela Carini, high-profile observers including J.K. Rowling, Elon Musk and former President Donald Trump dragged Khelif into the crosshairs of a debate over sex and gender in sports, spreading misinformation about her sex while undermining the work that it takes to be that good.
“The smirk of a male who knows he’s protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head,” Rowling wrote under a photo of Khelif’s fight with Carini.
Musk and Trump piled on, with the former president and current candidate promising to “keep men out of women’s sports.”
The attacks were without basis — Khelif is a woman and was born female.
So in Algeria, the attacks on her were seen not as part of a roiling debate on gender and sports, but an attack on the nation itself, and Algerians defended her fiercely.
When Khelif came home as the first Algerian, Arab and African woman to win an Olympic boxing gold, they gave her a reception befitting a hero who fought for the nation on several fronts.
After winning gold in Paris, Khelif said she “wanted to thank the Algerian people who supported me in this ordeal,” and she repaid that support by bringing a party to Tiaret.
“All Algerian men and women have the right to be happy and celebrate,” she told reporters Friday at a local government office.
The celebrations were worthy of the tireless work that took Khelif from the town where she learned how to box all the way to the 2024 Paris Olympics, and the four subsequent victories that made her an Olympic gold medalist.
And the baying crowds drowned out the noise of those who had tried to undermine Khelif’s historic victory.
Their accusations stemmed from the Russian-dominated International Boxing Association’s decision to disqualify her from last year’s world championships in Taiwan. Khelif’s disqualification, which came after she defeated a Russian opponent, was due to failing an unspecified eligibility test, according to the IBA.
The International Olympic Committee criticized the IBA and has called the testing “impossibly flawed.”
French prosecutors have opened a probe into a cyberbullying claim after Khelif’s lawyer Nabil Boudi filed a criminal complaint last week over alleged “acts of aggravated cyber harassment.”
Boudi said the boxer was targeted by a “misogynist, racist and sexist campaign,” and confirmed that Rowling and Musk were named in the lawsuit, which was filed against X.
“What we’re asking is that the prosecution investigates not only these people but whoever it feels necessary. If the case goes to court, they will stand trial,” Boudi told Variety.
Khelif’s coach Mustapha Bensaou told The Associated Press that “all those involved will be prosecuted for violating Imane’s dignity and honour.”
Last week, Khelif told Algerian television channel El Bilad that nobody had the right to question her sex, and acknowledged the fear she had felt during the Olympics.
But she continues to get the better of her opponents both inside the ring and out.
“Why was there such an outcry all over the world?” she asked. “I was afraid, but thank God, I was able to overcome it.”
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