Shkodër (Albania) (AFP)

Before becoming the first and only boxer in Albania, Elsidita Selaj had to hit hard against her family's reluctance and patriarchal discrimination.

But she realized her passion and dreams of the Olympics today.

She was only 15 years old when she showed up every day after school at the boxing hall in Shköder, her town in the north of this small Balkan country, to beg to be taught a sport considered to be the prerogative of men.

Before, "boxing was for me an impossible, unimaginable love, but thanks to my determination, it has become a possible love which belongs to me entirely", told AFP the young brunette woman.

On this winter day, she hits a punching bag with the one who has long refused to be her coach, Jetmir Kuçi, 43, nine times champion of Albania.

He did not want to take a wife in this country where the roles of some are well determined and where boxing was banned to all in the 1960s by the late dictator Enver Hoxha who deemed it "too violent".

"It was very difficult to accept, thinking of people's judgment," says Jetmir Kuçi.

He admits to having given in, imagining that Elsidita would quickly drop the case, because "this sport requires great sacrifices".

- "Very proud" -

But he was wrong.

The family of the young woman, ultra-reluctant at first, also sided with her.

“My parents were very scared, but my great love for boxing has convinced them little by little and now that I have succeeded they are very proud and completely sure,” she explains.

Because his talent is quickly rewarded.

In 2017, she won the bronze medal in a youth tournament in the Balkans, followed, in 2018, by silver at the European Junior Championships.

In 2019, she climbed to the third step of the podium at the European Under-22 Championship.

Now she has the Tokyo Olympics (July 23-August 8) in her sights, for which she will however have to get her qualification in the spring.

Places for Japan will be very expensive but she believes in it.

"The goal of any athlete, not just mine, is the Olympics".

His coach believes that the postponement of the Olympics for a year because of a pandemic "may work in his favor, because it gave him more time".

And if it's not Japan, there will still be Paris in 2024, he says.

All are behind her, starting with the sports bodies and the local authorities who pay her a monthly allowance of 490 euros in a country where the average salary is 420 euros.

- "Love of my life"-

"I am ready to work day and night so that my daughter may one day be a world champion, for me and all Albanians," says her father Luan Selaj, a construction worker who has three other children.

In the meantime, the boxer has "broken taboos for all of us," says her coach.

Albania has more than 1,100 boxing lovers, of whom around 300 take part in national and international competitions, according to the Albanian federation.

But no other girl in their ranks so well that she "trains with boys", underlines Enea Kovaçi, head of the Federation.

16-year-old Ertan Kraja, who also wants to be part of his country's elite, confronts him regularly.

"At first I was afraid to hit her too hard but given her strength, her abilities, I got used to it, it's like fighting a man," said the teenager.

Her grandmother Kimete Bashaj, 64, who has become a boxing fan so much that she now watches the main fights taking place around the world, would still like to see her granddaughter "next to her beloved," in a wedding dress, even more beautiful with all its medals ".

Elsidita warns, however: "boxing will remain the love of my life".

© 2021 AFP