Imane Khelif competes against Anna Luca Hamori of Hungary in the women’s 66kg quarter-final boxing match at the Paris Olympics on 3 August. (Mehmet Murat Onel/Anadolu via Getty Images)
From a small Algerian village, home of the boxer Imane Khelif at the centre of a gender eligibility row in the Paris Olympics, her father hailed the athlete as a “heroine”.
Omar Khelif said he had raised his daughter “to be brave”, as he proudly showed off a picture of her aged seven or eight years old, wearing her hair in plaits.
“Since she was little her passion has always been sport,” the 49-year-old said, sitting with two of his younger children.
Competing in the 66kg category of the women’s boxing competition in the Paris Games, his daughter Imane has found herself in the middle of a heated global row after it emerged that she had previously failed unspecified gender eligibility tests.
Last Thursday, the 25-year-old caused her Italian rival Angela Carini to retire hurt during a fight at the Paris Olympics after just 46 seconds — sparking a social media furore, with some, including former US president Donald Trump, framing the issue as men fighting against women.
There is no suggestion that Khelif, who has fought on the women’s circuit for years, including at the Tokyo Olympics, identifies as anything other than a woman.
Her father showed identity documents and her birth certificate, speaking from a rural village about 10km from Tiaret — a town nearly 300km south-west of the capital Algiers, which has been hit by water shortages in recent months.
“My child is a girl,” Omar Khelif said. “She was raised as a girl. She is a strong girl — I raised her to work and be brave.”
Imane won her fight against Hungarian boxer Anna Luca Hamori in Saturday’s quarter-finals, guaranteeing her a medal, the first at the Paris Games for Algeria.
Her father insisted that Imane won the controversial bout against Carini simply because she was “stronger and the other was weak”.
Imane has a “strong will at work and in training”, he said.
In an interview this year for the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef) — for which she is an ambassador — Imane Khelif spoke of her conservative upbringing and said her father had initially had difficulty accepting her boxing.
He later accepted her career, she said in the interview, calling her parents her “biggest fans”.
The boxer told Unicef she wanted to encourage more girls to go into the sport, particularly as opportunities for girls in sport can be limited in Algeria, and help fight obesity in the country.
“Boxing was not a sport that was very popular with women, especially in Algeria,” she told Algerian television Canal Algerie ahead of the Olympics. “It was difficult.”
In addition to overcoming cultural challenges, she also had to travel 10km by bus from her village to train at the boxing gym — selling scrap metal for recycling to pay for the bus fare, while her mother sold couscous.
Proud: Omar Khelif, the father of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, shows a picture of her as a child as he sits with two of his other children in the family home in Tiaret. (AFP)
“Imane is an example of Algerian woman,” said her father.
“She is one of the heroines of Algeria. God willing, she will honour us with a gold medal and raise the national flag in Paris.
“This has been our only goal since the beginning.”
In the local sports club where Imane started out, a group of girls of various ages were warming up and skipping with ropes.
“We wish her good luck; she is truly an athlete who makes us feel proud,” said 17-year-old Zohra Chourouk, punching her arms up in support.
“She honoured the national flag. She is our role model.”
The group of young women training called out a united “Good luck!” to their heroine.
Coach Abdelkader Bezaiz said he wanted to send her a message from the club where she had made her debut.
“I want to tell her that she shouldn’t bother with these criticisms circulating on social media networks,” the coach said.
“Their goal is clear — it’s designed to confuse her, and make her forget why she came to the Olympics.” — AFP