A number of high-profile sports figures have questioned Khelif’s involvement at the Paris Olympics, with tennis great Martina Navratilova labelling her gold-medal win a “travesty”. Navratilova said: “Thanks for nothing IOC [International Olympic Committee]. Shame on you. This is a travesty.”
Despite the furore surrounding her throughout these Paris Games, Khelif’s victory came amid a carnival atmosphere inside Roland Garros’s showpiece Court Philippe-Chatrier, which has been transformed into a boxing cauldron for the closing stages of these Olympics.
The 25-year-old was welcomed to the ring with the kind of rapturous cheers usually reserved only for a host-nation athlete, while Yang was booed every step of the way.
The result was never in doubt, Khelif immediately impressing as much with her speed and agility as her power, and she pinned Yang against the ropes early in the second round. Yang fought back valiantly in the third and final round but it was to no avail, and the Algerian wrapped up the clean sweep with a display of showboating and dancing before the bell.
In contrast to protests from some of Khelif’s earlier opponents, Yang generously greeted the result by raising the Algerian’s hands before the winner was carried off on her coach’s shoulders to receive the adulation of her numerous supporters.
Khelif had bulldozed her way to the final, causing her first opponent, Italy’s Angela Carini to quit after 46 seconds before unanimous-decision victories in her quarter-final and semi-final. That led to the gold-medal bout against Yang, whom she had been due to meet in last year’s world final, only to be disqualified from the competition following her victorious semi-final when the International Boxing Association (IBA) announced she had failed a sex test. The IBA has since been stripped of its rights to govern global boxing.