EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW. The Algerian boxer, battered by a controversy over her gender, had been training for months with an eye on the Olympics. Here is what her trainer has to say.

Algerian Imane Khelif took to the ring for her final fight of the Paris Olympics on Friday August 9, winning gold in the welterweight division. Unknown to the general public until the opening of the Games, she has been in the spotlight ever since, battered by a controversy over her gender.
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To get to the Olympics, Khelif, who received her boxing license in Nice, in the south of France, relied on a number of experts based in Algeria, in the United States and also in France. Le Point was able to reach one of them by phone : Georges Cazorla, who has worked out a program for her physical preparation for the Games. In the past, he has consulted for several leading sport federations and clubs.

Le Point : You helped prepare the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif for the Paris Olympics. How did you two meet ?

Georges Cazorla : I was a teacher of biology applied to physical activity and sport in the University of Bordeaux. There, I supervised the master thesis of Nasser Yefsah, Imane Khelif’s manager, who manages her career. His topic was boxing. He lived in Nice – and still does – and would come to Bordeaux to sit in my class on a regular basis. At the end of 2022, Nasser reached out to me and offered to help Imane Khelif prepare for the World Championship, the African Championship and the Olympic Games. So I kind of came out of retirement ! I didn’t know Imane then.

And you didn’t know much about boxing either !

True. But I’ve lived in the sports universe for a long time. I have been analyzing fights : how many punches are thrown or received, the body movements… I also used a Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy technique developed by one of my former PhD students, which allows for the analysis of 19 parameters (including some carbohydrates, lactate, some amino acids, urea, total protein, and also some inflammatory parameters such as CRP and immunoglobulins, which reflects the level of training) from only three drops of blood. This gave us valuable information about Imane’s physical and physiological condition, as well as her abilities. With her manager, we began developing a rigorous training program to maximize her progress. I’m not saying she wasn’t good before meeting me, of course ! In Algeria, Imane had already reached a good level in boxing, but lacking high-level facilities, her training relied on a pragmatic and intuitive approach. Now it has a more scientific framework.

You continued your testing in Paris with Imane Khelif.

In a testing center of the 13th arrondissement, called Monstade, we put her through a series of more or less sophisticated performance tests. From there, we developed a training formula that we called “FAITPAS”. Here are its ingredients :

F for frequency : how many times a week should she practice ?
A for attendance : the breaks must be planned in such a way that that the general orientation does not suffer.
I for intensity : we worked a lot on this aspect, including the heart rate, blood tests, physical and psychological approaches, and the interaction of aerobic-anaerobic exercise with the energy level, in order to better handle the three rounds. At the same time, Imane worked on building her muscles, focusing on speed and explosive power training. Some non-insider colleagues of yours wrote that boxing is based on strength and power. It is not. Amateur boxing is about hitting targets on an opponent. It is about technical skills.

T for time : how much time should be spent on each exercise to make it as efficient as possible ?
P for progress : how to progress towards the World Championship, then the Arab Championship, then the Olympic Games, alternating training and recovery.
A for alternating training and recovery.
S for specificity : trying to develop a strategy matching Imane’s and her opponent’s skills.

That’s the principle we used. I think it didn’t work too badly.

So you’ve met Imane Khelif several times.

Yes, absolutely. She’s often come to France to take part in training sessions or tests. Between September 2023 and April 2024, she had her license in Tarbes, in a club that had been founded by the former national technical manager of Algeria Karim Aiouaz, which had a good technical and medical center. She’s been in Nice since May, in the same club as her manager, who’s got a good reputation in the South of France boxing scene.

I never went to Algeria for this training. Her manager would commute between the two countries. And I didn’t see Imane Khelif during her last training course in Vittel in mid-July either ; it was supervised by her Cuban-American coach on whom she’s relied completely in recent weeks. Her long-time coach, Mohamed Chaoua, is also with her during the Paris Games

. An emotional connection has developed between us, even though neither Imane nor her coach speak much French. As far as I am concerned, Imane is obviously a great girl, an exceptional athlete who deserves all our respect.

The boxers and their staff before the fight with (from left to right) Imane Khelif, Nasser Yefsah, Georges Cazorla, Philippe Passelergue, Karim Aiouaz, Maëlys Richol and her trainer. © LAPEYRADE JP / JP LAPEYRADE/PHOTO PQR/MAXPPP

You were asked to supervise her at the end of 2022. Were you aware of the conflict between the International Boxing Association (IBA) and Imane Khelif ?

I found it out while watching the videos of the World Championship in March 2023. She was disqualified from the final against a Chinese female boxer. At the time I thought it was a matter of international and diplomatic disputes… But the decision was backed up by tests.

Honestly, I thought it was disgusting. Regardless of the results of these biological tests, and without going into the details – that’s the biologists and doctors’business – this poor young girl was shattered, devastated to discover, out of the blue, that she might not be a girl ! All the people who liked her, including me, went to help cheer her up.

The prospect of the Olympics helped put it all back together. Fortunately, she can also rely on her family (a very modest one, that she helps thanks to her boxing) who live in a small town in Algeria.

Yes, and me too, even though her morphotype is rather peculiar. Be that as it may, people have a distinct physical appearance, but it’s so different inside though. As for Imane, she was born a girl. She was raised as a girl. She has a girl’s sensitivity.

By this logic, why not test all the people whose abilities are superior to the others ? For instance, the French basketball player Victor Wembanyama, who is huge, for his growth hormones ? It’s silly.

Fortunately, everyone is different, or there wouldn’t be any competition at all. Let’s look at it from a performance perspective : what is competition ? It is a subject, man or woman, who is superior to the others.

And the Algerian team didn’t know anything either ?

They are light years away from these biological issues. They were happy to have a good female boxer. She’s a young woman, I’ll say it again, who was raised as a girl.

So what happened after that thunderclap announcement ?

After the 2023 Championship, when she was disqualified, I took the initiative and contacted a renowned endocrinologist at the University Hospital Kremlin-Bicêtre in Paris, who examined her.

He confirmed that Imane was indeed a woman, despite of her karyotype and her testosterone levels. He said : “There is a problem with her hormones, and with her chromosomes, but she’s a woman.” That was all that mattered to us.

We then worked with an Algeria-based doctor to control and regulate Imane’s testosterone levels, which are currently in the female range. Some tests clearly show that all her muscle qualities and others have diminished since then. Today, on a muscular and biological level, she can compare with a woman-woman-woman.

Were you following an International Olympic Committee recommendation regarding this testosterone level ?

I was so disappointed to see her stupidly disqualified from the New Delhi Championship that I decided to anticipate.

But with insight, I wonder now if I wasn’t wrong to step in… The Olympic Medical Committee had made a lot of publicity about the training of its testers who would, among other things, assess the testosterone levels of the athletes participating in the Games. So I wanted to stack all the odds in her favor, and make sure that her numbers were just right.

It is said that everyone must do some kind of sport. Everyone but certain people ? Some say we should have special categories, but even within a group of hypoandrogenic or hyperandrogenic people, there are differences from one person to another. There is so much variation that it’s impossible to create categories.

I’m going to ask the biology teacher in you the same question…

Between girls and boys, as far as performance is concerned, it’s during puberty that a testosterone-related dissociation takes place. Testosterone is an anabolic hormone, so it builds muscle. Which explains why boys are stronger than girls on a muscular level.

I hesitate to answer directly, because some women show a muscular quality close to that of men. And performance is an interaction of various components, including the physical aspects. In certain sports, the physical aspects play an important part in performance. You’ll never see puny boxers in either the men’s or the women’s categories.

Did you watch the IBA press conference held during the Olympics ?

No, I did not want to rekindle my anger. Many things could be said about the IBA. Its manager is an odd fish. He doesn’t want the IOC to get involved in boxing… All I know is that the IBA eventually justified itself in retrospect

. If they had warned us before the 2023 World Championship, we would have been on our guard. They qualified Imane for her first three fights, then disqualified her from the finals. They sent her a letter in English, even though she can’t read that language, asking her to sign it in order to get her results. She should never have signed that letter.

What did it involve ?

That she recognized her disqualification… Everything in New Delhi was strangely organized during this championship.

What are these IBA results about ? A karyotype ? Testosterone levels ?

According to what I could read, during its recent press conference the IBA did not wish to go deeper into the issue or reveal the nature of the tests that were conducted, so it is better to stick with the IOC’s position, which confirmed Imane’s eligibility as well as that of the Taiwanese woman who was also disqualified by the IBA in New Delhi in March 2023.

Translated from French by Bérengère Viennot