Algerian Boxer Imane Khelif Wins Gold Medal at Olympics After Gender Uproar

Imane Khelif is an Olympic Gold medalist. On Friday, Khelif — the Algerian boxer who was accused of being a man after her opponent quit because she hit her hard — earned gold after defeating China’s Yang Liu.

“I’m very happy. For eight years, this has been my dream, and I’m now the Olympic champion and gold medalist,” Khelif said, after winning by unanimous decision, per USA Today. “I’ve worked for eight years, no sleep, eight years tired. Now I’m the Olympic champion.”

Khelif won the first two rounds of the fight with Liu in the women’s welterweight division. According to the Associated Press, Khelif had previously said that she didn’t “care about that” controversy surrounding her gender and was instead focused on fighting. She won all four of her Olympic bouts.

“I want to tell the entire world that I am a female, and I will remain a female,” she said over the weekend.

Last week, social media was set ablaze after false allegations that Khelif was secretly a transgender woman who had infiltrated the women’s category of the games. The allegations came about after her Italian opponent Angela Carini withdrew less than a minute after the fight began, saying, “I have never been hit so hard in my life.” Carini later said she “wanted to apologize” to Khelif, adding,  “All this controversy makes me sad.”

Elon Musk posted multiple times on X about the match between the two women, agreeing that “men don’t belong in women’s sports.” Anti-trans author J.K. Rowling also railed against Khelif as a “male who knows he’s protected by a misogynist sporting establishment,” who was “enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head, and whose life’s ambition he’s just shattered.”  Even Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that he would “keep men out of women’s sports.”

The accusations made against Khelif were based on a 2023 incident where she and boxer Lin Yu-Ting were suspended from the International Boxing Association (IBA) Women’s World Boxing Championships. At the time, IBA President Umar Kremlev claimed that genetic testing had proven Khelif “had XY chromosomes,” and was therefore ineligible to compete. The specific tests conducted and their results were never made public, and Khelif challenged the claim.

The IBA was stripped of its role in organizing the Olympic games in 2019 amid corruption allegations, and evidence the organization rigged matches in Rio. Lin is expected to fight for gold against Poland’s Julia Szeremeta in women’s featherweight.