TIARET, Algeria (AP) — 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 controvers.