Karen Botha
Age: Old enough to have backache.
Appearance: Heidi meets Hercules. All apple cheeks and blonde curls on a muscle-packed frame.
Occupation: Wife of rugby legend, now making a come- back as a golfer, Naas Botha. South African long-jump hopeful. Two roles that have called on that Herculean strength to remain cool in the face of controversy.
Could you clarify that? Have you tried to spend more than an hour with Naas?
Be serious. What hurdles has she had to jump? Surviving her wedding which became a skande when they sold the publicity rights and had everything from the outlandish gown, to the edible confetti, to the honeymoon sponsored. Not crying when she was stripped of her All Africa Games bronze medal and banned for three months after testing positive for a banned stimulant.
Sounds dumb. Why did she take it? The tablets were prescribed for back pain. She says she did not know they contained the offending dextropropoxyphene. She officially declared them along with other noxious substances, like the cup of rooibos tea she drank the previous week, and her birth control pills.
So her career is over? Not yet. It was an analgesic stimulant — not a steroid, which carries a four-year ban. Those are the ones that turn men into gorillas and women into men, and she probably wouldn’t want to risk that because then she might start behaving like Naas.
So it could be worse? She’s lucky. She escaped the gender police, unlike Egyptian handball player Hanan Eid who was accused of being a man. Most mortals find the difference between men and women obvious, but they demanded a sex test. Although exactly how they finally concluded she is a woman remains one of the mysteries of modern athletics.
Career high? Making the Olympic squad that went to
Career low? Being knocked out in the qualifiers at
Present ambition? An Olympic gold in Atlanta next year.
Any chance? She holds the African long-jump record. But years of sport isolation, when a passion for jukskei kept people throwing a stick into a sand pit instead of the human body, means this is a sport where we are still regarded as global novices.
Most likely to say: “My back hurts.”
And what does Naas say? “She will definitely be putting everything into qualifying for the Olympics. She has to … I want to play golf in Atlanta.” And we thought he had no sense of humour.