Imane Khelif secures Olympic boxing gold despite online uproar regarding gender.

The gold medal seemed almost assured as the chants of “Imane! Imane! Imane!” echoed from the stands at Roland Garros late into Friday night.

And as the referee raised the hand of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, a roar filled the inside of this tennis stadium set up for Olympic boxing. She punched the air and danced circles in the ring.

Khelif had been the subject of one of the strangest controversies in Olympic history, caught as her manager, R. Hajjar, said, “between two parties” — Olympic leaders and a boxing federation they no longer recognize whose Russian leader has challenged him over gender.

But on Friday, after beating China’s Liu Yang in a unanimous decision and winning the 66-kilogram (146-pound) gold medal, she leaped out of the ring and onto her coach’s shoulders.

She said she had been badly bullied online after social media posts pushed by the banned International Boxing Association, which drove a narrative that her gender was in question, even as the International Olympic Committee said it was not. “Message to the world, the whole world is: Hold on to Olympic values and not bully people,” she said after the fight.

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Umar Kremlev, the Russian sports minister who runs the IBA, and other IBA officials have said the tests showed the women, who are not transgender, have XY chromosomes, suggesting they held a testosterone-based advantage over other women, who typically have XX chromosomes.

The IBA has not produced proof of the test results, including during a Paris news conference earlier in the week. The IOC has rejected those claims and stood by the boxers.