Christine Mboma will be an avid viewer from afar when the world championships begin in Budapest tomorrow. 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.
This story is from the August 18, 2023 edition of The Guardian.
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This story is from the August 18, 2023 edition of The Guardian.
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