Athlete Christine Mboma is the first woman from Namibia to ever win an Olympic medal. At the age of 18, she set a global under-20 record and an African senior record by taking home a silver medal in the 200 metres at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Mboma won the same event at both the Diamond League final and the World U20 Championships in 2021, lowering her previous record time with a run of 21.78 seconds.
She established an unofficial 400-meter world under-20 and African senior record in 2021 in 48.54 seconds, ranking her as the seventh-fastest female ever in the event. The record was set in June of that year, but Mboma had already twice broken the U20 world record in April.
Early in 2021, Mboma and fellow Namibian sprinter Beatrice Masilingi had received a medical examination in a training camp in Italy, where they tested positive for elevated testosterone levels caused by a hereditary disease. Before the evaluation, the sprintere were not aware of the condition. Due to World Athletics’ rules on testosterone levels for athletes with XY abnormalities of sex development, Mboma and Masilingi were prohibited from competing in races between 400 metres and one mile under the female division before the Tokyo Olympics. On January 15 2022 at Swakopmund, Mboma ran the 100 metres in 11.25 seconds to kick off the season.
