Algeria’s Imane Khelif achieved a historic victory at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games by defeating China’s world welterweight champion, Yang Liu, with a unanimous decision. Khelif’s win, celebrated by a large Algerian crowd at the Roland-Garros Stadium, makes her the first African female boxer to secure an Olympic gold medal.

All five judges awarded her a score of 10-9 in each round, affirming her victory. Khelif becomes Algeria’s second boxer to win Olympic gold, following Hocine Soltani’s achievement at the 1996 Atlanta Games. Her gold medal is Africa’s ninth Olympic gold, adding to the eight previous golds, including Robert ‘Aruba’ Wangila’s 1988 Seoul Olympics win. Wangila remains Africa’s first black boxer to win Olympic gold, while the other six gold medals were earned by white South African boxers during the apartheid era.