Golden girl Khelif 'a locomotive' driving Algerian women's boxing

AZAZGA, Algeria — In a gym in northern Algeria's Kabylia region, 15-year-old Cerine Kessal drives her fists into a punching bag. The two-time national champion is dreaming of greater feats after Algerian Imane Khelif won Olympic gold last year.

Khelif's victory generated newfound interest among Algerian girls and women in the male-dominated sport, with gyms across the North African country witnessing a surge in memberships.

She emerged from the Paris Olympics as a trailblazer for aspiring women athletes in Algeria, despite a gender controversy over her eligibility.

"I want to compete in African and world championships," Kessal said, speaking in a blend of Arabic, French and Tamazight, the language of the Amazigh people, also known as Berbers.

Her coach, Djaafar Ourhoun, said Khelif had become "a role model for the other boxers at the gym", after Kessal won her local club, Jeunesse Sportive Azazga, its only medal at a recent national championship.

The small gym, refashioned from a former municipal slaughterhouse with the help of local families, now trains 20 women boxers, said Ourhoun.

The young girls' "hunger for results" has often sparked "competitiveness, even jealousy, among their male counterparts," he said.

"I want to be like Imane Khelif and win an Olympic gold medal," said Kessal.

In 2023, the International Boxing Association barred Khelif from its world championships after it said she had failed gender eligibility tests for carrying XY chromosomes.

The 25-year-old champion denounced the IBA's "false and offensive" allegations, and vowed last month to keep fighting "in the ring" and "in the courts".

"I have seen adversity before," she said in a statement, "but I have never stayed down".

'Shattered taboo'

In Bejaia, further east of Algiers, clubs such as Dream Team and Sidi Ayad Boxing Club have also welcomed more women and girls.

Lina Debbou, a former boxer and now sports adviser, said this momentum started right after the Olympics.

"Imane Khelif brought so much to women's boxing," she told reporters. "More girls are joining the sport thanks to her."

Even in relatively more conservative parts of the country, like Djelfa in the Saharan Atlas range, some 300 kilometers south of Algiers, more women are said to have taken up the sport.

"We first tried introducing women's boxing in 2006, but it was not successful due to the region being conservative," Mohamed Benyacoub, the director of local club Ennasr, explained.

Now, "the women's sports movement has begun to revive," he said, adding that Khelif had "shattered the taboo that women can't box".