Imane Khelif wins gold in women’s 66kg boxing

It became the most unlikely source of intrigue and attention at the Paris Games: an unknown boxer from Algeria in the women’s 66kg class.

In the 46 seconds of Thursday afternoon last week, following the shocking defeat of Italy’s Angela Carini in her fight with Imane Khelif, Paris became the epicentre of a culture war over gender and fairness in sport.

Eight days later, after surviving a public interrogation on the most personal matters, Khelif left the Roland Garros arena with a gold medal around her neck.

This victory cannot be taken away from her, unlike what was denied her at the World Championships in New Delhi when she was disqualified for failing a gender eligibility test, just hours before the gold medal match.

The Algerian became her country’s first Olympic gold medalist in 12 years and the seventh in history, beating China’s Yang Liu in front of a predominantly Algerian crowd to claim the most controversial medal of the Games.

The Algerian was banned by the International Boxing Association (IBA), whose two gender tests in the past two years reportedly revealed male chromosomes in her DNA, but was welcomed by the International Olympic Committee, which dismissed the IBA’s findings as “flawed” and “illegitimate”.

As a result, she was swarmed by the media during her post-game interview, with footage resembling the selfie-happy reporters who flocked to LeBron James, Steph Curry and the US basketball team.

At the same venue where Serbian superstar Novak Djokovic made history just four days earlier when he won the gold medal against Carlos Alcaraz, Khelif wrote her name into the history books.