Having put a maelstrom of scrutiny behind her, Algeria’s Imane Khelif is on high of the world.
Khelif defeated China’s Yang Liu 5–0 Friday to seize the gold medal within the girls’s 66-kilogram boxing division on the 2024 Summer season Olympics in Paris. The victory gave Khelif her first profession Olympic medal in her second Video games, and the Algeria its second gold medal of the Olympics following Kaylia Nemour’s triumph within the girls’s uneven bars in gymnastics.
Along with her triumph, Khelif salvaged a victory from a tough two weeks.
Following her spherical of 16 win over Italy’s Angela Carini, Khelif grew to become the topic of untamed hypothesis and falsehoods surrounding her gender; she had been disqualified from the Worldwide Boxing Affiliation’s 2023 world championships for failing an unspecified gender-eligibility take a look at. The Worldwide Olympic Committee, which is within the means of wresting management of novice boxing away from the IBA, criticized the disqualification and upheld Khelif’s proper to compete.
Khelif, 25, additionally addressed the hypothesis surrounding her gender earlier within the Video games, saying that she had been the goal of bullying.
“(Bullying) can kill folks’s ideas, spirit, and thoughts. And it might divide folks. And due to that, I ask them to chorus from bullying,” she said in Arabic final Sunday.
Khelif’s earlier accolades embody a light-weight welterweight silver medal on the 2022 world championships, in addition to gold medals within the African Championships, Arab Video games and Mediterranean Video games.
