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The tough childhood of embattled Olympic boxer Imane Khelif has come to light after her 46-second victory sparked an international gender row amid a frenzy of misinformation.
Khelif, of Algeria, overcame severe odds to compete at her second Olympic Games despite having been forced to sell bread on the streets as child in order to pursue her boxing dream in a “conservative” environment that insisted the sport was only for men.
“I happened to sell bread in the street, I collected dishes and other objects to earn money and to be able to move around because I came from a very poor family,” she previously revealed as she opened up about the obstacles she was forced to overcome in life.
Having been born a woman and lived her entire life as one, Khelif was catapulted to the centre of a rabid debate over trans women in sport because her opponent, Angela Carini, of Italy, refused to fight on after receiving what she described as the hardest punch of her life.
While several high-profile figures jumped to accuse Khelif of being a trans man who was unfairly competing against women, it was quickly clarified that Khelif, who has suffered nine losses in her international career, was a woman but one who had previously failed a gender test due to a medical condition – similar to the controversy South African athlete Caster Semenya faced throughout her career.
The athlete, 25, previously told how she rose to compete at the highest level after being told boxing was “only for men”.
She explained that while she had a “difficult childhood”, a teacher recognised that she had the right “physical qualities” to be good at boxing.
“I have always loved football and I played it in my little village,” she remembered in a resurfaced interview. “My father always preferred football to boxing. But I was very good at sports in my school and my teacher encouraged me to become a boxer since I had good physical qualities and he was right.”
Growing up in a conservative area in Algeria, where it is illegal to transition gender and to be gay, Khelif explained that the people around her thought boxing was a sport only suitable for men.
“I come from a conservative region and family. Boxing was a sport dedicated only to men,” she said of her “difficult” start.
Khelif, who admits she comes from an impoverished background, said that even training as a boxer was challenging and she had to raise the money she needed to pay for training herself.
“These are obstacles that I encountered when I started,” she said.
“I happened to sell bread in the street, I collected dishes and other objects to earn money and to be able to move around because I came from a very poor family.”
But her perseverance paid off and she eventually moved to the Algerian capital before making a life for herself abroad as she pursued her sporting dreams.
However, Khelif has faced new challenges over the past year because of what has been described as a “medical condition”.
This saw her and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting disqualified from last year’s World Championships at the eleventh hour because they did not meet gender eligibility criteria.
Reacting to her previous ban, Khelif said: “The year 2023 was very difficult for me after a great year...
“It was a hard blow for me but I came back stronger to show my strength and my determination and show the whole world what a brave woman Imane Khelif is.”
Carini, who forfeited her Olympic dreams when faced with Khelif, said that she was left fearing for her life.
“I couldn’t carry on,” she later told reporters. “I have a big pain in my nose and I said, ‘Stop’. It’s better to avoid keeping going. My nose started dripping from the first hit.
“It could be the match of my life but, in that moment, I had to safeguard my life, too. I felt to do this, I didn’t have any fear, I don’t have any fear of the ring or to get hit.
“I fought very often in the national team. I train with my brother. I’ve always fought against men, but I felt too much pain today.”
Despite the controversy, the International Olympic Committee has defended its decision to allow the women disqualified from the World Championships to compete.
“What I would say is that this involves real people and we are talking about real people’s lives here,” spokesperson Mark Adams said on Thursday.
“They have competed and they continue to compete in the women’s competition. They have lost and they have won against other women over the years.”
While little is known about Khelif’s medical history, a test from the International Boxing Association’s (IBA) confirmed that she had XY chromosomes [male] and therefore did not meet their eligibility criteria.
But the presence of these chromosomes does not mean that Khelif is transgender and it has been speculated that she has differences in sex development (DSD) – the collective name for a series of rare conditions that causes a person to develop differently from what would be typically expected of their assigned sex.
