Though mentally distraught to date, nothing could have killed the will, the spirit and determination for her to once return to her favorite sports that she embraced at a tender age.
World Athletics might have stopped all athletes with Differences in Sex Development (DSD) from competing in March last year, but the teenage athlete from Namibia never hanged her spikes.
World Athletics stated that they will only be allowed to compete unless they reduce their high testosterone levels to below 2.5 nanomoles per litre for a minimum of six months and in some cases 24 months.
Tebogo backs African sprinters to star in Paris Wiseman Were itching for Absa Kip Keino Classic hat-trickOlympic 200m silver medallist Christine Mboma, 20, was not ready to quit or go down yet.
I felt like the world had collapsed under my feet...it really affected me mentally up to now, said Mboma, who is set to reinvent her athletics for the first time after one year and eight months.
Mboma, who last competed at the Commonwealth Games when she claimed bronze in 200m on August 6, 2022 in Birmingham, Great Britain, is among the star attraction at the Absa Kip Keino Classic scheduled for Saturday at the Nyayo National Stadium.
But still I never stopped running, I never changed my training schedule because athletics was in my veins. It meant a lot for me and there is no way I would have stopped, said Mboma, adding that she never lost hope.
Running has occupied the whole of my life right from school. I wasnt running to win medals, athletics was my passion, said Mboma, who is grateful to her coach Henk Botha and her grandmother Josephine Mutenya Muyevhu for giving her hope.
My coach, grandmother, my sisters and uncle have been so supportive through this journey as they made me feel better,' said Mboma, adding that she had no choice but to take a treatment to lower her testosterone levels.
Mboma said she hasn't felt any change in her body since she embarked on the journey to lower her testosterone levels. I am a woman and I will remain a woman come what may, said Mboma.
Mboma said apart from her supportive coach and family that kept her going on, the move to keep on training despite not competing helped her ease the stress.
Talking to psychologists also helped me mentally, said Mboma whose mother, Patricia, died in 2016 while giving birth, leaving her to take care of her two younger siblings.
I would occasionally leave the city to go back upcountry and help my grandmother manage her supermarket stall... It proved therapeutic too,' said Mboma, who lives in Namibia capital Windhoek with her siblings, who are in school.
Mboma is happy to be competing again and relaunching her athletics career at the Absa Kip Keino Classic. Kenya brings back the good memories because its in Nairobi where her international career started.
Mboma first competed in Kenya during the 2021 World Athletics Under-20 Championships where she won the 200m title before returning at the Kip Keino Classic the same year to win the half-lap race again.
Mboma said she will have her options open ahead of the Paris Olympics. I cant predict what will happen in Paris but I want to qualify first in 200m, said Mboma.
Mboma grew up in Shinyungwe, a village in the Kavango East region of Namibia, as the eldest of three daughters. Her father abandoned her as a baby, and her mother, Patricia, died in 2016 while giving birth, leaving Christine to take care of her younger siblings.
Mboma attended Shinyungwe Combined School and then Rocky Crest High School in 2017 and took up athletics.
At the age of 18, she won a silver medal in the 200 metres at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, becoming the first ever Namibian woman to win a women's Olympic medal and breaking the world under-20 and African senior record
