Kenya will be making its 17th appearance in the Commonwealth Games with 123 athletes set to feature.
Among some of the notable athletes is 26-Year-old Maximilla Imali, the only female representing Kenya in the100m race.
Maximila was a silver medalist in the Africa Championship 2022. In the 2019 Africa Games, she bagged a bronze medal in the women's 4 × 100 metres relay.
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She set the women’s 100m National Record at Kasarani in April 2022 with a time of 11.19 seconds.
Before her qualification for the Commonwealth Games Maximila faced various challenges in her athletics career after being found to have high testosterone stemming from Difference of Sexual Development (DSD).
In 2019, Athletics Kenya dropped her from Team Kenya that took part in the IAAF World Relays championship in Japan.
She had been dropped as a precaution by AK to avoid the IAAF’s sword concerning the restriction of testosterone levels in female runners that took effect on May 8, 2019.
"When I qualified to represent Kenya at the 2019 World Relays in Yokahama I was removed from the team. I was told that I would not join the team in order to avoid tainting the federations name,” she noted while talking to Olympics Channel.
In a past interview with Olympics Channel, she explained how it changed her life, linking it to the demise of her mother.
“I was born and brought up like this. I first had these problems in 2014 after the World Junior Championship in Oregon. After they tested me, I was not given any indication that I had any high testosterone in my body,”
It caused a lot of issues as I wanted to know more about myself from my mother because no one could explain it better to me than her. In the midst of all that she became very disturbed and fell sick with her passing away in 2016,” Maximila recalled.
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