Khelif has been caught up in a gender storm. She just emerged with a gold medal

It became the unlikeliest source of intrigue and attention at the Paris Games: an unknown boxer from Algeria in the women’s 66kg category.

In the space of 46 seconds on Thursday afternoon last week, following a stunning withdrawal from Italian Angela Carini in her bout with Imane Khelif, Paris became the epicentre of a culture war over gender and fairness in sport.

Eight days later, having survived a public interrogation into the most private of matters, Khelif left the Roland Garros arena with a gold medal around her neck.

This one, unlike that which she was denied in New Delhi at the world championships when disqualified for failing a gender eligibility test just hours before the gold medal bout, they can’t take from her.

The Algerian became her country’s first Olympic gold medallist in 12 years and seventh in history, defeating China’s Yang Liu in front of a heavily Algerian-flavoured crowd to claim the most controversial medal of these Games.

Banished by the International Boxing Association (IBA), whose two gender tests over the past two years allegedly revealed male chromosomes in her DNA, the Algerian was welcomed by the International Olympic Committee who disregarded the IBA’s findings as “flawed” and “illegitimate”.

As a result, the media swarmed to her post-bout interview opportunities in scenes that resembled something you would expect from the selfie-seeking posse of reporters that have flocked to LeBron James, Steph Curry and the United States’ men’s basketball team.

At the same venue where Serbian superstar Novak Djokovic created history when he won that elusive gold medal against Carlos Alcaraz just four days earlier, Khelif etched her name into the history books.