With an outpouring of fans greeting her as she arrived in her hometown on Friday, Olympic gold medalist Imane Khelif extolled Algeria for backing its athletes and said she hoped to again make her country proud in the future.
The football-obsessed North African country has given Khelif the celebrity treatment since she returned to Algiers earlier this week. Nowhere has this been more true than Tiaret, the largely rural region in central Algeria where she grew up and learned to box.
She and track star Djamel Sedjati were honored by local leaders and then paraded through the streets atop a city bus as hundreds of residents raised their hands and snapped photos.
“All Algerian men and women have the right to be happy and celebrate,” she told reporters Friday at a local government office. “This proves that the government and the people are all behind sports.”
Algerians vigorously defended Khelif as she advanced through the Olympic Games amid international scrutiny and uninformed speculation about her sex.
Despite being born and raised as a woman, she found herself in the crosshairs of Western debates about gender, sex, and sports after failing unspecified and untransparent eligibility tests for women’s competition from the now-banned International Boxing Association in 2023.
As observers including billionaire Elon Musk, author J.K. Rowling, and former U.S. President Donald Trump referred to her as a man in online posts, Algerians saw the controversy as an attack on their nation.
On Friday, Tiaret residents acknowledged the hardships that Khelif faced throughout the Olympics and said they hoped her success was just the beginning.
"We hope authorities will support her in moments of victory like this as well as throughout the whole year. She has suffered enormously and started from scratch,” Mohamed Hamou said, sitting next to Khelif in Tiaret on Friday afternoon.
Later at the parade, Nadjia Fehma, another Tiaret resident, reveled in her victory and said she was an inspiration.
"She’s made us really proud, especially given her career path and the way she’s ended up succeeding," Fehma said.
Khelif's hometown welcome came days after she filed a criminal complaint for cyber-harassment in France, with her lawyer alleging a “misogynist, racist and sexist campaign” throughout the Olympics.
On Wednesday, Khelif acknowledged the difficulties and fear she felt on El Bilad, a private television channel in Algeria. She said nobody had the right to question her sex and that she wasn't someone who enjoyed mixing politics and sports.
“Why was there such an outcry all over the world?" she asked. “I was afraid, but thank God, I was able to overcome it.”
Former President Donald Trump on Saturday again decried two gold medalist Olympic athletes, falsely labeling the female boxers as men.
Trump made the comments while speaking at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania and pledging to “keep men out of women’s sports,” turning his attention to the recently concluded Olympic Games and the case of two athletes who became the subject of international scrutiny regarding misconceptions about their gender.
Trump has long criticized transgender people as part of his rallies and focused specifically on transgender athletes, using language about gender identity that LGBTQ+ advocates say is wrong and harmful.
In the case of the two boxers, both Imane Khelif of Algeria and Li Yu-ting of Taiwan have faced misconceptions about their gender created by the fallout from the Olympic-banished International Boxing Association’s decision last year to disqualify both fighters from the world championships for allegedly failing an eligibility test.
Trump did not mention the athletes by name but remarked that “in the Olympics, they had two transitions.”
“They were men. They transitioned to women, and they were in the boxing,” Trump said.
Despite being born and raised as women, Khelif and Lin found themselves in the crosshairs of Western debates about gender, sex, and sports after failing the unspecified and untransparent eligibility tests for women’s competition from the now-banned International Boxing Association.
Trump and other prominent figures have complained about Khelif being allowed to compete and Trump has previously referred to Khelif as a man.
On Saturday, he did so again in describing both athletes competing in the games as “crazy” and said, “It’s so demeaning to women.”
🇩🇿🥇 Olympic gold medalist Imane Khelif returned to her home town of Tiaret and received an incredible champions reception from the locals pic.twitter.com/Ya3ElH7dLd
— Algeria FC (@Algeria_FC) August 16, 2024