“He doesn’t fight anymore.” Words, referring to Imane Khelif, who look like a sad ending has only passed a year, but it looks like a century.
The Paris Olympics was that, among other things, of the strong controversies caused by the match between Khelif, who would then win gold, and Angela Carini. But now, between discussions on gender tests and difficult moments on a personal level, for both contenders the ‘noble art’ seems almost a distant world. Yesterday, after being already excluded from an internship in Turkey, the name of Angela Carini did not appear on the list of called the national team for the last gathering, in Assisi until September 2, in view of the Liverpool World Championships. A non -call that is the negative culmination of a moment no after instead, months ago, Carini seemed to have passed the shock of the games having won yet another Italian title and then an international tournament in Poland. With her, outside the list Irma Testa, who, however, specified about the Ansa that he is not yet thinking about the retreat.
Today, however, Khelif again is news. His mentor and former manager Nasser Yesfah revealed to the ‘Nice-Matin’, the newspaper of the city where the Olympian should have been training in view of the debut in professionalism, which Imane “no longer fights. At the moment he stopped completely. He has not even started again, he no longer practices boxing. After what happened to the Olympics …”. The hope of Yesfah is that it may be a temporary stop, not surprisingly it has added that “in any case, if it becomes a professional, it will be subjected to the same type of test (of genre editor’s note)”. But there is a precedent that does not induce to optimism: in June of this year in the Khelif programs, which after Paris 2024 is no longer climbed in the ring, there was the return on the occasion of the ‘Eindhoven Box Cup‘, a tournament which, as required by the ‘World Boxing‘ regulation, the new body that governs the Olympic boxing, provided for mandatory gender tests for the participants. And Khelif had been excluded from the competition, without however he was clarified if he had agreed to undergo the exams. In any case, the controversies were filmed. Now, however, writes the ‘Nice-Matin’ that “Khelif has not left Nice alone, but also the world of boxing, at least temporarily.
Disappeared from the moment he won gold for the first time, Imane Khelif returned home. “” From one day to the next, he stopped communicating his club with us. It became too popular for a small organization like ours “, tried to explain Tony Vivarelli, co-president and founder of the ‘Boxing Nice blue’, club under whose guidance the Algerian champion should have passed to professionalism.” Imane makes sessions in Algeria or goes to Qatar, at the National Training Center, but nothing more. And then he mainly travels for sponsorship contracts, “said Yesfar. For 13 months no one has seen Imane Khelif in the ring for 13 months: the mystery continues.
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