Too Good to Be True

Game. Set. Match. The crowd is in an uproar. It is 2017, and tennis legend Serena Williams has just won her 23rd Grand Slam title. With this victory, she surpassed Steffi Graf’s record and made history.

The win, arguably one of the most impressive feats in women’s tennis history, drew backlash. In October 2025, on “Stockton Street,” the podcast Serena hosts with her sister Venus, she recalled the strangest explanation she had ever heard for her success: a competitor she consistently dominated on the court claimed the sisters had used witchcraft to win their matches. Venus not only corroborated the statement but added a detail that made the story stranger: someone on the rival’s team had gone to a “black magician” to try to beat Serena.

These accusations take different forms across eras, places, and events. Still, the pattern is undeniable: someone consistently outperforms the rest of the field, and instead of crediting hard work and talent, fans and rivals find disturbing justifications to explain their distaste for someone else’s success. In modern sport, this typically takes one of a few forms: drugs, gender, or, I guess, witchcraft.

Drug accusations are extremely common; “they must be doping” is a statement we have all heard in reference to an impressive feat of athletic excellence. In recent years, many female athletes have faced accusations of being men “secretly” competing in women’s sports. Finally, the infamous invocation of “black magic”: the assumption that an athlete must have supernatural help and that their success is not their own. Although the first two sound much more plausible than the third, they all come from the same place. The refusal to accept that someone is simply better is pervasive among athletes and fans alike.

Williams’ story sounds absurd, but there’s a laundry list of witchcraft accusations in professional sports globally. In 2003, a soccer match between Rwanda and Uganda sparked outrage as the Rwandan goalkeeper Muhamud Mossi lit an unknown substance and tied black pouches to the back of his goal net. This led Ugandan players to accuse him of using “juju” to stop goals and violently try to remove the items.

The result: Rwanda won 1–0, with Jimmy Gatete, who was injured in the brawl, scoring the game-winning goal. Mossi’s explanation for the “witchcraft” was that the items he had tied to the net were a protective prayer ritual and a personal religious charm meant to bring luck. The charm had nothing to do with “freezing” the opposing team from scoring goals. Rwanda’s soccer team heavily criticized Uganda for letting its superstition get the better of them and using witchcraft as an excuse for not being able to score past legitimate athletic saves.

This was not the first time this has happened between two soccer teams. In February 2002, before a game between Mali and Cameroon, Malian police accused Cameroonian soccer player Thomas N’Kono of “dropping” a black magic charm on the grass; they arrested him. When Cameroon threatened to boycott the game, police released him, and he returned in time to play. Cameroon won 3–0.

In both of these examples, the accusers lost, revealing the “sore loser” mentality that drives people to make claims of magic, doping, etc. Malian police had a vested interest in arresting N’Kono. The same is true of Uganda’s accusations against Mossi. Countless other examples of this same situation occur in sports. Paul Pogba was accused of cursing Mbappé to help Manchester United knock out PSG in the 2019 Champions League tournament. In 2022, Alejandro “Papu” Gomez was accused of using black magic to keep his teammate Giovani Lo Celso benched.

The examples are endless. The conclusion is the same: people cannot stand talent.

But while this is a global pattern, it is important to note that Black female athletes often bear the brunt of this persecution. Williams faced all of it throughout her career, including accusations of black magic, doping, and lying about her gender. A 2018 study of social media abuse during Wimbledon 2015 found recurring themes of fans and other athletes accusing Williams of drug use and lying about her gender.

This isn’t limited to Williams; South African runner Caster Semenya experienced similar scrutiny. After Semenya won the 800 meters at the 2009 World Championships as an 18-year-old, her speed and appearance prompted sex verification testing. Semenya has differences in sex development and XY chromosomes, but she rejects the intersex label and identifies as a woman. She was later barred from her event under testosterone rules. Other African runners, including Christine Mboma and Francine Niyonsaba, have faced similar scrutiny.

Scholar and activist Moya Bailey coined the term misogynoir to explain this phenomenon. Misogynoir is the blend of racism and sexism aimed at Black women, and Bailey’s first published work on the concept examined how Caster Semenya was treated.

When placed in the context of misogynoir, racism, and the refusal to accept that some people are just that good, the whispers of witchcraft and underhanded methods of success around Williams can no longer be seen as a random oddity. It is another iteration of an old story: a Black woman wins, and people search for a reason it does not count.

Blaming a hidden “trick” is not a clever insight; it is a projection of the ego of the loser. Psychologists call this the self-serving bias, in which we blame external factors for our shortcomings or mistakes. Losing to someone better hits your sense of self, but losing to a curse or a body that “isn’t fair” is simply out of your control.

However, there is reasonable cause for suspicion at times. Marion Jones won three Olympic golds in 2000 and was later stripped of them after admitting to using performance-enhancing drugs. The problem was never with suspicion itself; it was with who gets suspected first, how loudly, and on how little evidence. Williams was tested, questioned, and mocked for decades without a single positive finding. Semenya broke no rule; she was born with the body she has. When doubt follows the same athletes repeatedly, regardless of evidence, it is not skepticism; it is bias.

We repeat this suspicion in our own communities. We feed into rumors of classmates cheating, we laugh when someone suggests an athlete can’t be as smart as a “regular” student, and we consistently undermine accomplishments that may make us feel insecure. That person isn’t in Math 55 because they clauded their way through high school; they really are just that good. The girl who got into Hum 10 isn’t there by mistake. The guy in your econ class who got the coveted internship worked really hard. Remember that not only are others deserving of their accomplishments, but you are too. Someone else’s success is not your failure.

Sport is meant to celebrate what people can do with talent, hard work, and years of training. Every time we reach for a curse or a miracle drug or a conspiracy to explain greatness, we take that away from athletes, often the same ones.

Sometimes the simplest explanation is the true one. She was just better.

Salma Gheith ’30 (salmagheith@college.harvard.edu) is comping the “Harvard Independent.”