Christine Mboma will be an avid viewer from afar when the world championships begin in Budapest on Saturday. At times she has found watching athletics emotionally challenging during her enforced exile from the sport, but the year’s showpiece event provides a welcome break from helping out at her grandmother’s supermarket and promoting her own clothing line.
Mboma, 20, has been doing her best to keep busy over the past five months since World Athletics dropped its regulatory bomb on DSD (Differences of Sexual Development) athletes, ruling them out of the sport for the immediate future.
The Namibian had catapulted herself into the global athletics consciousness when breaking the 400m world under-20 record in 2021, before doing the same in the 200m a few months later to win an eye-catching Olympic silver in Tokyo. There seemed to be no stopping the teenager who was able to run so fast with such a ruggedly raw technique. But then World Athletics did.
In March this year, World Athletics ruled that all athletes with DSD, who have 46 XY chromosomes with internal testes rather than ovaries, cannot compete in female sport unless they reduce their high testosterone levels for a minimum of six months and in some cases 24 months.
Since then, none of the 13 DSD athletes affected by the ruling have spoken publicly, silently conspicuous by their track absence.
Mboma does not particularly want to be the first. A naturally shy character, she would rather just fade into the background. But she knows her profile makes that impossible, which is why she has chosen to break her silence to the Guardian.
“I was just disappointed,” she said of the World Athletics ruling. “To be honest, I don’t want to discuss a lot of stuff in public. I don’t want to talk about a lot of stuff.
“I can say I have been taking the [testosterone-lowering] medication and it’s had no impact. I know I can run as fast as before even with it. The way I’m training, I’m OK. I feel confident.”
For some time after the ruling came in, Mboma stopped training full time. Other than a few light sessions to maintain fitness, she concentrated on other endeavours and only recently returned to full training under the watchful eye of her coach, Henk Botha, who has taken the lead in managing the medical minefield Mboma now finds herself in.
He explained: “She has to take one oestrogen pill each day. The biggest challenge is we are not sure the medication will keep her testosterone at a certain level because there is no historic scientific data we can use anywhere for this.
“We don’t want her testosterone levels to drop to zero because all women have testosterone. But we don’t want her too close to the limit because it might be that she runs a race, is tested and it’s too high. So the biggest challenge is to find a golden line of the best level of oestrogen she can take to keep her at a specific level.”
Botha, who does not agree with the World Athletics regulations, echoes Mboma’s assertion that the medication has not slowed her down.
“It’s crazy – it has had no negative effect,” he said. “Body-wise, she’s still strong and had a great speed session the day before yesterday. I was actually a bit surprised to see that speed this early in our proper training.
“ She is very motivated. It’s like somebody has given her a challenge and she has accepted it.”
Last month, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled the Swiss government had not protected Caster Semenya against discrimination when its supreme court refused to overturn a ruling against her legal challenge of the World Athletics DSD regulations.
With the governing body insisting its rules will remain, Botha described the ECHR verdict as no more than “bragging rights”, while Mboma does not want to comment on another athlete’s case.
She says any contention around the regulations is absent in Namibia, where support for their athletics superstar is universal.
“Everyone always supports me in Namibia,” she said. “Even when I’m not running they always encourage me and I tell them that I’m proud to be Namibian.
“Everywhere I go, in the mall or wherever, everyone is looking at me and wanting pictures. My life has changed a lot for the better.”
Able to run again from the end of November, Mboma’s plan is to compete indoors for the first time over the winter before bidding to qualify for the 2024 Olympics at an early-season race in Australia.
Perhaps scarred by recent events, she prefers not to make any grand predictions for her planned Olympic comeback.
“I won’t say I want to win a medal, break records or anything else,” she said. “I’ll just say that, by God’s grace, we’ll see what will happen. I’ll prepare and do my best.”
Instead of chasing world gold in Budapest next week, that means swallowing pills and watching from her home nearly 5,000 miles away.
‘I know I can run as fast’: Christine Mboma on the medical minefield of World Athletics’ DSD ruling - The Guardian
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