But the 24-year-old law graduate, now one of the first e-sports athletes to make the Forbes list of global trailblazers, is as committed to flooring adversaries with words in her quest to be defined on her own terms.
“I insist on being recognised as an e-sport athlete, not a female e-sport athlete,” she said at a gaming parlour in Kenya’s capital Nairobi.
“I bring my mental strengths to the table, not my physical strengths, and that way it shouldn’t be segregated (by) gender.”
QueenArrow, as Gathoni is known in the gaming world, found early success fighting as the character Ling Xiaoyu, a pig-tailed Chinese teen, in the hand-to-hand combat game Tekken, winning her first major competition in 2019.
She has continued to rise through the ranks, earning money, fame and influence.
