It's amazing what can be projected onto a victory. On August 1, 2024, at the Villepinte exhibition center hosting Olympic boxing, Imane Khelif jabbed at the nose of her Italian opponent, Angela Carini, who forfeited the match after just 46 seconds. "One two three, viva l'Algérie!" fans celebrated in the stand. The 25-year-old Algerian boxer had just qualified for the quarter-finals of the Paris Olympics. The story might have ended there if Carini hadn't tearfully left the ring exclaiming, "It is not fair!," providing a powerful echo to an insistent rumor born during the 2023 World Boxing Championships in New Delhi: that Khelif is not a woman.

In the minutes that followed, social media amplification turned the match into one of the biggest controversies of the Paris Games. The Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, spoke out on X against a "fight that was not on an equal footing," outraged that athletes with "masculine characteristics" were allowed to take part in women's competitions. From entrepreneur Elon Musk and his 200 million-plus subscribers on X to novelist JK Rowling, the usual critics of the "woke ideology" raise their voices to denounce a fight rigged by "transgender" Khelif.

On X, the author of the Harry Potter saga turned anti-trans activist even saw in the boxer's face "the smirk of a male" who was "enjoying the distress of a woman he's just punched in the head." Khelif even became part of the American presidential campaign when Republican candidate Donald Trump wrote, in his trademark indignant capital letters, on his Truth Social network: "I will keep men out of women's sports!" A gimmick he would use right up until the eve of his re-election, lashing out in a campaign clip broadcast on November 3 and showing a photo of Khelif, as the voice-over claimed that "men could beat up women and win medals."

Reporters were dispatched to Biban Mesbah, in northwest Algeria, the village where the sportswoman grew up. Her father, a 49-year-old unemployed welder, was ordered to produce birth certificates and childhood photos of his daughter. LGBTQ+ rights organizations protested against "intrusive suspicions" and a "wave of international hatred," but speculation ran rampant about the boxer's supposed "hyperandrogenism" or "male chromosomes." Without intending to do so, Khelif had become the catalyst for all the passions and fantasies surrounding gender. But on August 9, in the under 66 kilos final, she proved to all the "haters" ranting on social media that she was first and foremost a great champion. Khelif won the gold medal and became a symbol of national pride in Algeria: She's the first African boxer to win an Olympic title.

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