EDITORIAL: Why must our athletes be punished for being themselves?

Namibians should be fuming. The faces of this nation should be red with rage over the injustice inflicted on our two brightest track stars - Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi. Once global sensations and Olympic finalists, they have been reduced to mere shadows of themselves, not by injury or lack of discipline, but by a system that deems their natural abilities a problem.

World Athletics, the sport’s governing body, effectively barred the two young women from competing in their preferred events, unless they agreed to medically suppress their natural testosterone levels. Let that sink in: Two African teenagers told they are too fast for the world’s comfort. Told to alter their biological make-up - the very gift that made them special.

It’s baffling. Would the world ask Cristiano Ronaldo to take injections to dull his pace? Or force Serena Williams to undergo treatment to make her physically “fairer” to her opponents? It’s unheard of in any sport to punish an athlete for being naturally exceptional. Talent, after all, is not just DNA. It's honed through sleepless nights, strict diets, punishing routines and monastic discipline. Mboma and Masilingi didn't stumble onto success — they worked for it, just like Mayweather, Tyson and Holyfield did in the boxing ring.

And yet, these Namibian athletes were met not with applause, but with suspicion and exclusion. What crime did they commit? Being their natural, God-given selves. World Athletics has, in effect, told them: You are too much. Tone it down. That is not regulation. That is erasure.

Today, they trail in races where they once led the pack - stripped, like Samson in the Bible, of their natural strength. And for what? To appease a system that cannot accept Black excellence!