800M Olympic bronze winner Margaret Nyairera Wambui has been barred from participating in the Stockholm Diamond League Meeting for failing to take medication to lower her strength.
This was after the ruling by the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) that required women with high testosterone levels to take medication to suppress it.
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.
"Why? Why don’t we take maybe men with low testosterone and categorize them as women?” devastated Wambui as quoted by Game Yetu.
Among other women, athletes whose name were struck out of the Stockholm meeting are Olympic winner Caster Semenya and Burundian Francine Niyonsaba who scooped a silver medal in 2016.
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.
Athletics Kenya official Barnabas Korir, however, supports the IAAF ruling claiming that athletes like Wambui have an advantage over others.
“This has been a simmering issue especially with our very own athletes having complained about running with these women with excess testosterone,” he said.
In support of IAAF’s new rule, Athletics Kenya dropped 100m and 200m champion Maxmilla Imali and 400m athlete Evangeline Makena from the team that was to represent Kenya in the IAAF World Relays in Japan.
Fans took to social media to express their disappointment towards IAAF ruling which they claimed will cost Kenya some international medals.
