Algerian boxer Imane Khelif has won a gold medal Friday at the Paris Olympics, emerging a champion from a tumultuous run at the Games where she endured intense scrutiny in the ring and online abuse from around the world over misconceptions about her womanhood.

Khelif beat Yang Liu of China 5:0 in the final of the women’s welterweight division, wrapping up the best series of fights of her boxing career with a victory at Roland Garros, where crowds chanted her name, waved Algerian flags and roared every time she landed a punch.

After her unanimous win, Khelif jumped into her coaches’ arms, one of them putting her on his shoulders and carrying her around the arena in a victory lap as she pumped her fists and grabbed an Algerian flag from someone in the crowd.

“For eight years, this has been my dream, and I’m now the Olympic champion and gold medalist,” Khelif said through an interpreter. “I want to thank all the people who have come to support me. All the people from Algeria and all the people at my base.”

Fans have embraced Khelif in Paris even as she faced an extraordinary amount of scrutiny from world leaders, major celebrities and others who have questioned her eligibility or falsely claimed she was a man. It has thrust her into a larger divide over changing attitudes toward gender identity and regulations in sports.

Khelif told SNTV, a sports video partner of The Associated Press, last weekend that a gold medal would be “the best response” to the backlash against her. She also said the wave of hateful scrutiny she has received “harms human dignity” and called for an end to bullying athletes.

It stems from the Russian-dominated International Boxing Association’s decision to disqualify Khelif and fellow two-time Olympian Li Yu-ting of Taiwan from last year’s world championships, claiming both failed a murky eligibility test for women’s competition.

The International Olympic Committee took the unprecedented step last year of permanently banning the IBA from the Olympics following years of concerns about its governance, competitive fairness and financial transparency. The IOC has called the arbitrary sex tests that the sport’s governing body imposed on the two boxers irretrievably flawed.

The IOC has repeatedly reaffirmed the two boxers’ right to compete in Paris, with President Thomas Bach personally defending Khelif and Lin while calling the criticism “hate speech.”

“We have two boxers who are born as women, who have been raised as women, who have a passport as a woman and have competed for many years as women,” Bach said.