Imane Khelif left a rival fighter thanking god for avoiding serious injury after facing her in 2022 – nearly two years before sparking a gender row at the Paris Olympic Games.
Khelif beat Italy’s Angela Carini on Thursday – she quit 46 seconds into the fight after getting caught on the nose in the early exchanges. She was in tears after the fight, saying she withdrew for her own safety and that she had never been hit so hard before.
And she isn’t the only athlete to make such remarks after coming up against Khelif.
In December 2022, Khelif beat Brianda Tamara in Guadalajara, Mexico with such force, Tamara couldn’t believe that she had escaped a serious injury.
Months later, in March 2023, Khelif was disqualified before the final of the IBA Women’s World Boxing Championships due to the levels of testosterone in her system, prompting Tamara to speak out.
This was Imane Khelif fighting in Mexico in December 2022 against a Mexican woman.
Three months later, a test apparently revealed the XY chromosome.
Note the force of the punching.
Imane’s opponent that day, @BriandaTamara, said she certainly did:#OlympicGames #Boxing https://t.co/NvltUigCbT pic.twitter.com/8PhfGzJO2F
— teresa smith (@treesey) July 29, 2024
She wrote on X at the time: ‘When I fought with her (Khelif) I felt very out of my depth, her blows hurt me a lot.
‘I don’t think I had ever felt like that in my 13 years as a boxer, nor in my sparring with men.
‘Thank God that day I got out of the ring safely, and it’s good that they finally realized.’
A post uploaded onto Tamara’s Instagram account only two days ago shows her face cut and bruised with a caption explaining that it was from after the Khelif fight.
On Thursday, as Khelif’s fight with Carini threatened to overshadow the Paris Games so far, Tamara replied to Claressa Shields, an American female boxer, on X saying people sent her death threats after her comments about fighting Khelif.
Shields wrote: ‘I’m taking a stand! Women should fight against women, men fight against men and transgenders fight against transgenders! This is ridiculous and I’m heartbroken for the women boxers at the Olympics!’
Tamara wrote back: ‘But they wished me death when I just reacted.’
Khelif herself railed against her 2023 disqualification, saying at the time: ‘There are some countries that did not want Algeria to win a gold medal.
‘This is a conspiracy, a big conspiracy, and we will not be silent about it.’
Genetic tests that were reportedly taken in 2023 have shown that the 25-year-old Khelif has male XY chromosomes in her DNA. But she is not transgender.
There have been similar debates in sport before, with South African runner and two-time 800m Olympic gold medal winner Caster Semenya also having XY chromosomes in her DNA. The arguments here, however, are far more intense given the physicality of boxing.
Khelif, who was beaten at the quarterfinal stage of the Tokyo Olympics, fights next on Saturday against Hungary’s Anna Luca Hamori – who says she is not concerned.
‘I’m not scared,’ Hamori told reporters. ‘I don’t care about the press story and social media. If she or he is a man, it will be a bigger victory for me if I win.
‘I’m trying to not use my phone before the fight. I don’t want to care about the comments or the story or the news.
‘I just want to stay focused on myself. I did it before my last two fights, so I think this is the key, and we will see.’
