In disappointing news to 800m Olympic Bronze winner Margaret Nyairera Wambui, she has been barred from participating in the Stolkholm Diamond league meeting as punishment for failing to take medication to lower her strength.
The 24-year-old is one of several star female athletes affected by an International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) ruling this month that requires women with high levels of testosterone to take medication to suppress it.
Two Kenyan sprinters have been dropped from the team for the IAAF World Relays championship in Japan this week, after blood tests showed high levels of testosterone pic.twitter.com/vI34s9TmgB
— African Curators (@AfricanCurators) May 10, 2019
A devastated Wambui firmly stood her ground and declined to take any medication that will lower her performance.
“I am very disappointed; I don’t feel even like going on with the training because you don’t know what
you are training for. Why, when you have a high level of testosterone in men, you are likely to perform
well and we celebrate that? But when it comes to women we have to tell them to lower it and we draw
them out of the competition.
Athletes such as Wambui, who finished third behind Semenya in the 800 m at the 2016 Rio Olympics, and the silver medallist from Burundi, Francine Niyonsaba, are also affected.
Wambui’s hopes of making the Kenyan team to the World Championships in October now seem hazy as
her future in international championships has been compromised.
“Running is in me, in my blood, it is something I cannot do without. Now they are telling us we can’t
compete, we just feel rejected. We are naturals, we did not dope,” she complained.
However critics highlight that the very nature of elite athletic success is down to one physical advantage or another, such as swimmers with disproportionately big hands or feet, or basketball players who are taller than the average person.
Athletics Kenya official Barnabas Korir, however, supports the IAAF ruling claiming that athletes like
Wambui have an advantage over others.