Category: Athletics

• CJ Ujah’s B sample tests positive for two banned substances
• UK Sport admits to ‘concerns’ about crisis in athletics

A wretched 24 hours for UK Athletics continued on Tuesday when CJ Ujah’s B sample confirmed his positive drug test at the Tokyo Olympics. It now seems increasingly likely the Team GB men’s 4x100m team will be stripped of their silver medal.

Separately UK Sport has admitted to having “concerns” about the crisis in British athletics, which led to several Team GB stars asking Sebastian Coe to save the sport in this country when they met him last week in Zurich.

Christine Mboma knows the faster she runs the clearer her advantages with difference in sex development become

Christine Mboma runs the 200 metres like no other elite sprinter in history. Her start is sluggish. Her drive phase needs work. But then her legs begin to whirr … and suddenly whoosh! One, two, three, four opponents are picked off. At the Olympics she flew from fifth with 50m left to win a silver medal. Last week she also added the Diamond League title in an Under-20 world record of 21.78 sec. What makes the 18-year-old’s achievements remarkable, aside from her age, is that she only began focusing on the 200m in July.

Given time, and better technique, Florence Griffith Joyner’s world record of 21.34 sec will fall. Yet Mboma is also increasingly faced with a devilish catch-22. The faster she runs, the more she provides evidence that she has an unfair advantage as an athlete with differences in sex development (DSD). Francine Niyonsaba, who won the women’s 5,000m Diamond League final has a similar dilemma.