Women’s 800m champion Caster Semenya has arrived at the Court of Arbitration for Sport to fight proposed rules that would force her to lower her testosterone levels.
The 28-year-old South African, who has been dogged by questions about her gender, was seen giving a peace sign ahead of the first day of her landmark hearing in Lausanne, Switzerland on Monday morning.
Her court challenge is set to last five days with a judgement expected at the end of March.
The South African government has said the rules proposed by track and field’s governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations, specifically target Semenya and has called them a ‘gross violation’ of her human rights.
Controversial rules would force so-called ‘hyperandrogenic’ athletes or those with ‘differences of sexual development’ to take drugs to lower testosterone levels below a prescribed amount if they wish to compete.
The rules were to have been introduced last November but have been put on hold pending this week’s hearings at the Lausanne-based CAS which Semenya is expected to attend.
South African government officials have called the proposals ‘discriminatory’ and say that ‘women’s bodies, their wellbeing, their ability to earn a livelihood, their very identity, their privacy and sense of safety and belonging in the world, are being questioned.’
When it was reported last week that the IAAF would argue that Semenya should be classified as a biological male — a claim later denied by the IAAF — she hit back, saying she was ‘unquestionably a woman’.
In response to the report, the IAAF — stressing it was referring in general terms, not to Semenya in particular — denied it intended to classify any DSD athlete as male.
But in a statement, it added, ‘If a DSD athlete has testes and male levels of testosterone, they get the same increases in bone and muscle size and strength and increases in haemoglobin that a male gets when they go through puberty, which is what gives men such a performance advantage over women.
‘Therefore, to preserve fair competition in the female category, it is necessary to require DSD athletes to reduce their testosterone down to female levels before they compete at international level.’
On Monday morning, Semenya’s legal team hit out at the IAAF for disclosing its expert witnesses, claiming this represented a breach of a confidentiality agreement and an attempt to ‘influence public opinion’.
Semenya has now been granted permission to disclose the experts who are testifying in support of her case. This will be done on Tuesday (today), her lawyers added in a statement.
Semenya is not alone — the two athletes who finished behind her in the Rio Olympics 800m, Francine Niyonsaba of Burundi and Kenya’s Margaret Wambui, have also faced questions about their testosterone levels.
But it is the 28-year-old South African, who also won the 2012 Olympic gold and has three world titles to her name, who has led opposition to the proposed rules.
“She looks forward to responding to the IAAF at the upcoming CAS hearing,” Semenya’s legal team said, adding that ‘her genetic gift should be celebrated, not discriminated against’.
Led by Sports Minister Tokozile Xasa, South Africa’s government argues that the rules are “discriminatory.”
“What’s at stake here is far more than the right to participate in a sport.
“Women’s bodies, their wellbeing, their ability to earn a livelihood, their very identity, their privacy and sense of safety and belonging in the world, are being questioned,” Xasa said on Friday.
The minister warned that if the rules were implemented, they had the potential to hinder any “little girl growing up in an African village with dreams of becoming a top sportswoman.”
Athletics South Africa has pledged its “unqualified support” for Semenya and she has received support from other sports.
Cricket South Africa said it stood behind the “national icon” and denounced the IAAF regulations as ‘an act of discrimination’ against women in sport.
And on Sunday, tennis great Martina Navratilova threw her weight behind Semenya.
The 18-time Grand Slam singles winner said it was significant that the change would only apply to female athletes competing in distances from 400m to a mile.
“Leaving out sprints and longer distances seems to me to be a clear case of discrimination by targeting Semenya,” Navratilova wrote in Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper.
“And can it be right to order athletes to take medication? What if the long-term effects proved harmful?… I hope she wins.”
Questions about Semenya’s gender
Two-time Olympic 800-meter champion Caster Semenya has been dogged by questions about her gender since shooting to fame in 2009.
The South African, then aged just 18, stormed to World Championship victory in the 800 metres in Berlin but was then forced to undergo humiliating gender tests after exhibiting high levels of testosterone.
Semenya has identified as a woman her entire life and her lawyer recently reiterated that the runner is ‘unquestionably a woman’.
The results of the tests were never officially made public. But it has been widely reported that the 28-year-old has an ‘intersex’ condition of hyperandrogenism giving her testosterone levels that are three times those usually found in women and approaching those of a man.
It has also been widely reported that she was born with no womb or ovaries and instead, due to a chromosomal abnormality, internal testes. Semenya has not addressed those claims directly.
She spent 11 months on the athletics sidelines while she had tests but was cleared to compete in 2010.
By this time the International Association of Athletics Federations had set a testosterone threshold. It meant Caster could run again if she took medicine to suppress her testosterone levels.
The ruling was then challenged by Indian runner Dutee Chand, who also has hyperandrogenism.
In 2015, the Court of Arbitration for Sport suspended the rules for two years, meaning Semenya could come off the medication.
With testosterone considered a key ingredient contributing to an athlete’s strength and speed, some have suggested Semenya has an unfair advantage over rivals.
But critics say the way she has been treated has shamed the sport, and harks back to 1966 when female competitors at the European Athletics Championship were subjected to a ‘nude parade’ past three gynaecologists.
Source: Daily Mail
