After the triumph of the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif against its Chinese rival Yang Liu In the gold medal match for the 66kg category at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Biban Mesbah, a native of Khelif, celebrated this victory.
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With gunshots in the air and chants of joy, the rural village of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif celebrated her gold medal at the Paris Olympics on August 9 after a gender controversy.
Imane Khelif won the gold medal at Paris 2024 this Friday.
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The people Biban MesbahThe town of about 6,000 cheered Khelif’s name and sang the country’s famous chant: “One, two, three… Long live Algeria.” “It’s Algeria’s victory,” his father Omar Khelif told reporters after watching the fight on a giant screen in this town about 300 kilometers southwest of Algiers, the Arab country’s capital.
Residents also fired shots into the air. in honor of the 25-year-old boxer’s first Olympic medal And the jubilation reached the capital too, with crowds gathering in the city centre to celebrate the victory with fireworks and honking car horns.
On the occasion of the victory, the President of Algeria, Abdelmadjid Tebbounejoined the celebrations on social media: “We are all proud of you, Olympic champion Imane, your victory today is Algeria’s victory and your gold is Algeria’s gold. (…) A strong woman.”
Before the final fight, hundreds of volunteers turned up at Biban Mesbah to prepare for the big night and watch the competition. “We helped each other, some bringing couscous, others oil and vegetables, and those who couldn’t help with provisions did so with the preparation,” said Amina Saadi, a 52-year-old mother of six children. “We are all united behind Imane Khelif, who has honoured Algeria, it is the least we can offer her,” he assured.
The Imane controversy
It should be remembered that during these Olympic games, the boxer She was the victim of a social media campaign that portrayed her as a “man fighting women.”
The controversy erupted because her rival in the round of 16, the Italian Angela Cariniretired from the fight after 46 seconds in the ring and said that she had “never” in her life been “hit so hard.”
Although Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had labelled Imane Khelif and Taiwanese Lin Yu-ting as transgender based on tests carried out by the International Boxing Association (IBA) in 2023, the International Olympic Committee has always defended the 25-year-old fighter and backed her by explaining that the tests were “arbitrary” and “so flawed that it is impossible to take them into account”.
In her debut at the Paris Olympics, Imane Khelif beat her opponent, Italian Angela Carini, in just 46 seconds.
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The Olympic gold
After her victory, Imane told the media: “I am a strong woman with special powers. From the ring, I sent a message to those who were against me.” When the Olympic gold was already a reality, Madness broke out among the Algerians who celebrated a historic medal.
Khelif, who comes from a family with limited resources, spoke before the Games of the difficulties of her life in “a village of conservative people” on the edge of the desert. Imane explained that her father had initially refused to let her take up boxing. “I come from a conservative family. Boxing is not a sport widely practised by women, especially in Algeria,” she told Canal Algerie a month before the Games.
In an interview with Unicef, he explained that he used to sell scrap metal and his mother used to sell homemade couscous to pay for bus tickets to go to training in a village ten kilometres away. “I started with nothing and now I have everything,” the boxer said in that interview.
*With information from AFP
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