Despite the gender row at the Paris Olympics, the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif won the gold medal on Friday 9 August, defeating the world champion, the Chinese Liu Yang, who took silver.

As she won, her poor, rural hometown erupted in joy in the face of a major gender controversy. At the end of the day in Biban Mesbah, cheers of Khelif's name and the country's famous chant "one two three, viva l'Algerie" were heard in all the streets.

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune joined the celebrations on social media site X, saying, "We are all proud of you, Olympic champion Imane, your victory today is Algeria's victory and your gold is Algeria's gold."

"It's Algeria's victory," her father, Omar Khelif, told reporters as he watched the fight on a giant screen along with the rest of the village around 300 kilometres (185 miles) southwest of Algiers, a village that has only 6.000 habitants. The tension was there, but the Algerian was ahead on all the judges' scorecards and all the rounds of the fight. 

She did a jig in the centre of the ring and thumped the chest of the opponent. Khelif was paraded around the arena on a team member's shoulders, and her father wished to be there, but celebrated it as if he was. Also, villagers fired shots into the air in honour of 25-year-old Khelif’s first Olympic medal following her victory over China's Yang Liu in the women's 66kg final. 

The jubilation also spread to the capital Algiers, where crowds invaded the city centre, celebrating the victory with fireworks and a chorus of car horns. Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune joined the celebrations on social media site X, saying: "We are all proud of you, Olympic champion Imane, your victory today is Algeria's victory and your gold is Algeria's gold."

Even with temperatures of 46 degrees Celsius (114 degrees Fahrenheit), hundreds of volunteers turned out in her town to help prepare for the big night, and the men carried out a vast clean-up operation while dozens of women were busy cooking a giant couscous. "We agreed to give the village a new face and breathe new life into it, with the victory of Imane Khelif," her cousin Mounir Khelif, 36, told AFP.

"We all helped each other, some bringing couscous, others oil and vegetables, while those who couldn't help with provisions helped with the preparation," said Amina Saadi, 52, a mother of six.

"We are all united behind Imane Khelif, who has honoured Algeria, that's the least we can offer her", she said. The boxer has been the victim of a social media hate campaign that portrays her as a "man fighting women". "I'm a strong woman with special powers. From the ring, I sent a message to those who were against me," she said Friday after her win.

Gender controversy

The gender controversy ignited in the French capital when Khelif defeated Angela Carini in 46 seconds in her opening bout, the Italian reduced to tears and abandoning the fight after suffering a badly hurt nose. After some days of meetings and talks, the International Boxing Association (IBA) said that she is a men, not women, with XY chromosomes. The IBA is not in the Olympics organisation after being banned last year over multiple concerns.

The IOC leapt to the defence of Khelif with President Thomas Bach saying they were born and raised as women, with the documentation to support it. Neither boxer is known to identify as transgender. The 25-year-old Khelif  fought at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago, but there was no controversy at the time and neither won a medal.

Though in 2023, she was disqualified from de Wolrd Championship following gender eligibility testing by the International Boxing Association, which is not recognised by the International Olympic Committee and is not running the sport in Paris.

From a family of limited means, she spoke before the Games of the difficulty of her life in "a village of conservative people" in semi-desert surroundings. Imane said that her father initially found it difficult to accept her boxing.

"I came from a conservative family. Boxing is not a widely practised sport by women, especially in Algeria," she told Canal Algerie a month before the Games, smiling readily and her voice soft. In an interview with UNICEF, she said she used to sell scrap metal and her mother sold homemade couscous to pay for bus tickets to a nearby town.