One of the most-discussed sports stories of 2024 only received attention for a short time this summer, but that was enough to prompt year-end recognition, including from Google and The Associated Press.
That would be the saga of eventual Olympic women’s 66kg boxing gold medalist Imane Khelif of Algeria.
The short version of what happened with Khelif is that she drew wild attention beginning with her round of 16 win over Italy’s Angela Carini, who withdrew from the match after 46 seconds. Carini said at that time she withdrew over the pain from Khelif’s punches, but was not making a political statement, was not refusing to fight Khelif, and was not commenting on whether Khelif should be eligible.
But that quickly spiraled into an absolute media firestorm, particularly based on messaging from the heavily Russia-linked and Olympic-banned International Boxing Association, that Khelif had failed an unspecified “gender eligibility test” at their 2023 world championships.
That media firestorm included claims from the likes of Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling that Khelif was transgender despite no evidence to support that allegation, leading to a lawsuit from her and her team. That also got brought up on ESPN, particularly with Pat McAfee conflating transgender athlete issues with what had been discussed around Khelif at that point (which had nothing to do with transgender athletes) and offering a follow-up that clarified nothing.
Other media outlets handled this extremely poorly, particularly The Boston Globe with their insertion of “transgender” into a headline of an AP story that specifically did not include that term (and their eventual apology had its issues as well).
Due to all of that, many people looked for information on Khelif, which explains why she was the top-ranked athlete in Google’s recently released worldwide year in search results and second only to Mike Tyson in their U.S. results.
Those are trending search results, not “most searched for.” A Google release on this has “trending” searches defined as queries that “had a high spike in traffic over a sustained period in 2024 as compared to 2023.” And it makes sense that that spike was more intense for figures like Khelif and Tyson who saw more prominence in 2024 than 2023 than it would be for, say, Aaron Rodgers (who did not make either the U.S. or worldwide top 10 trending athletes, but definitely had lots of people searching for information on him in both years).
It’s still quite remarkable to see a female boxer anywhere near the top of wider “athletes” search results. That helps speak to how wild the discussion around Khelif got, and how many aspects of that discourse probably motivated people to do more searching.
It’s also worth discussing how significant the Khelif story was in the context of the overall year in sports. She certainly provided one of the most notable sports media stories this year (although not necessarily in a good way), and she received the third-most votes in the Associated Press-conducted voting (with voters including employees of both the AP itself and its member organizations) for AP Female Athlete of the Year, behind only Caitlin Clark and Simone Biles.
A group of 74 sports journalists from The Associated Press and its members voted on the award. Clark received 35 votes, Olympic gymnast Simone Biles was second with 25 and boxer Imane Khelif was third, getting four votes. https://t.co/1ZMJdOwY3k
— Will Graves (@WillGravesAP) December 24, 2024
Despite Khelif’s story certainly being one of the most-discussed moments from this summer’s Olympics, ESPN’s 10-minute “Images of the Year” SportsCenter video of “the moments that defined sports in 2024” did not include it in their section on the Paris Games (beginning around 8:30 below).
The moments that defined sports in 2024, explored through @SportsCenter‘s ‘Images of the Year’ pic.twitter.com/oHD7i22qAA
— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) December 24, 2024
At any rate, the Google trending search and AP voting data here show just how much attention the Khelif story drew, despite taking place in a lightly watched Olympics sport that only took place between July 28 and August 9.
[Google]