Earlier this week, Mboma was involved in a car crash when travelling with her coach Henk Botha from their base in Grootfontein to the Namibian capital Windhoek.
Botha says Mboma was lucky not to have suffered any damage to her eyesight after the car’s windscreen was smashed by a flock of guinea fowl, peppering the athlete with shards of glass.
“One of the guinea fowl almost went through the windscreen into Christine’s face,” he told BBC Sport Africa.
“She was full of glass pieces on her face and I took them out piece by piece. It could have been severe but we are very blessed to be safe and ok.”
Botha, a former captain of Namibia’s rugby team, turned to brighter matters when addressing the rise of Mboma, who has overcome serious hardship in her life to become such a success.
When she was 13, her disabled mother – who headed up the single-parent family – died during childbirth, leaving Mboma to look after her two younger siblings.
Meanwhile, the poverty she grew up in meant she slept in a bed without a mattress, in a room she shared with her grandmother, until athletics came calling.
“It was a very strong field and we are very surprised because all the contestants are superstars of African sport in my view,” he said.
“To be part of any award from the BBC is just out of this world for a small little place like Namibia and for a young girl that not more than three years ago ran barefoot in the sand.”
Mboma first wore a pair of athletics spikes when she was 15, just three years before her remarkable rise saw her win the Olympic silver that has resulted in being voted, by the public, as the BBC African Sports Personality of 2021.
