Caster Semenya decries World Athletics ‘unjust’ rule

……The South African athlete claimed there was a lack of logic in the regulations.

From Ogundele Olanrewaju

South African star Caster Semenya has called out World Athletics in a scathing post on Twitter.

The runner is unable to compete across a number of distances due to the World Athletics regulations for athletes with differences in sex development.

She is prohibited from competing in distances from 400 metres to mile but can race across 100m, 200m and any event further than 1600m.

In her Twitter post, Semenya claimed there was a lack of logic in the regulations.

“So according to World Athletics and its members, I’m a male when it comes to 400m, 800m, 1500m and 1600m,” she wrote.

“Then a female in 100m, 200m, and long-distance events. What research. What kind of a fool would do that?”

The World Athletics regulations, implemented in 2018, prohibit athletes with DSD from competing between 400m and a mile unless they take hormone-reducing drugs.

Semenya, a two-time Olympic gold medallist in the 800m, refuses to take such drugs and was subsequently not able to defend her title at Tokyo 2020.

After unsuccessful appeals at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and Switzerland’s Federal Supreme Court, the 30-year-old is currently awaiting a hearing at the European Court of Human Rights.

Semenya is currently competing across longer distances, and she clocked a personal best time of 8min 54.97secs over 3000m last week.

World Athletics confirmed in November that it would not be changing its regulations, even after the International Olympic Committee issued a new framework for transgender and DSD athletes.

The guidelines suggested that transgender women should no longer be required to reduce their testosterone levels to compete in the women’s sport category.

They also conclude that there should be no presumption that Trans women have an automatic advantage over natal women in sport.

The IOC previously recommended trans women suppress their testosterone levels to under 10 n/mol per litre for at least 12 months to compete, but this policy was deemed no longer fit for the purpose last year.

It is up to individual sports to determine their own rules, however, with the IOC guidelines only intended as a recommendation.