Ken Borland

Two-time Olympic gold medallist Caster Semenya has called for the International Olympic Committee to show more consistency and have a uniform policy for competitors who are under gender scrutiny.

The 33-year-old Semenya, who won the 800m in the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games, is not competing in the Paris Olympics because World Athletics insists she takes medicines to lower her testosterone levels, a consequence of her differences of sex development (DSD) condition.

Semenya refuses to undergo the treatments, which are mandatory in order to compete, and has been locked in legal battles with World Athletics since 2018.

The Paris Olympics have been rocked over a gender controversy in boxing, with two competitors, Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, having their eligibility for the women’s tournament being questioned. Both are guaranteed a medal, having advanced to the semi-finals in their respective weight divisions.

In Semenya’s homeland of South Africa, social media has been awash with posts questioning why the boxers are allowed to compete, especially in a combat sport, while Semenya is effectively banned. The IOC has backed the two boxers, casting doubts on the veracity of the International Boxing Association’s gender eligibility tests that found they had XY chromosomes.

The IBA is no longer recognised by the IOC, who are running the boxing events in Paris themselves.

Semenya herself has sympathy for Khelif’s plight, the 25-year-old welterweight having borne the brunt of the storm.

“Imane is a great boxer and people always criticise when someone is doing well, people always talk then. When she wasn’t winning, then everyone was quiet.

“But the IOC’s policy and constitution should not contradict each other. Sport is for all people and the constitution says no to discrimination. But the minute they allowed women to be disgraced, it confuses us.

“If sport is for all, then why does the big governing body allow this sort of thing to happen? They should stand their ground and lead by example. It’s about quality leadership that safeguards, protects and respects women,” Semenya told sportsboom.com in an exclusive interview in Pretoria.

“What happened at the Olympics now is not what happened in my space. Each organisation has its own policy, boxing have their own and athletics has its own.

“It’s not about what I want, but about principles of life. My views are not about me because I have ventured more into coaching now, I stopped running seriously in 2022. I have kids now and I want to spend more time at home.”

World Athletics, then known as the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), initially restricted their new rules on testosterone levels to just three track events – the 400m, 800m and 1500m.

Semenya initially switched to the 200m and 5000m races, but was never a real contender at those distances, failing to make the Olympic qualifying standards.

Last weekend she ran her first competitive race in more than a year, in the Tshwane (Pretoria) event of the Spar Women’s Grand Prix 10km Series, finishing 10^th in 37:13.

A beaming, jovial Semenya clearly enjoyed the experience.

“It was real nice and I did it for all the women, to make sure I inspire and show them that anything is possible. It was to celebrate women in sport and all women.

“I like to challenge myself, I was feeling outside my comfort zone and I thought I would end up walking, but I just kept on going. I’m very happy about my run and finishing in the top-10. Maybe when I’m 34 I must run the Comrades Marathon [an annual 88km ultramarathon held in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa],” Semenya laughed.

While South Africans can rightly feel proud of Oscar Pistorius for redefining what is possible for the disabled, Usain St Leo Bolt is undoubtedly the athlete who has pushed the boundaries of human ability to new levels.

Although the Jamaican did not set any new world records in 2012, his achievement in defending both the 100 and 200m titles at the Olympic Games was unprecedented and he added consecutive gold medals in the 4x100m just for good measure.

As a wonderful graphic comparison of all the 100m Olympic medallists in the New York Times [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ILMpeDKHDU] pointed out, Bolt is so far ahead of all the other great sprinters that he would have beaten the legendary Carl Lewis by 10 feet if they had run together in London this year.

In an event where the margins are so small, Bolt not only dominates, he destroys his opposition. The only time he has been beaten in a major race in recent years came after a false start in the 2011 World Championships 100m. Bolt owns the three fastest times ever in the 100m and is also the world record-holder in the 200m.

And in London this year he was visibly slowing down at the finish, but still clocked 9.63 seconds, second only to the 9.58 he ran at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, when he also took time to celebrate before reaching the finishing line.

There is no doubt the 26-year-old is one of sport’s greatest entertainers, someone people want to see perform, much like Pele, Muhammad Ali or Michael Jordan. Not only are his athletic exploits extraordinary to behold, the crowds also eat up his showboating and clowning around before and after races.

Before Bolt, the 100m used to be a deadly-serious affair, full of macho posturing and muscle-clenching, but the 6ft5, wonderfully proportioned Jamaican pulled the mickey out of that and then went on to leave his competitors as also-rans.

It is clear that Bolt combines freakish physical attributes (the perfect combination of height, stride length, twitch fibre speed, power and pace) with mental strength and efficient training. Having said in Tokyo earlier this year that he was keen to try the 400m and long jump at the 2016 Rio Olympics, Bolt backtracked last month and said he felt he could still get faster in the sprint events with different training methods.

What a scary thought for his rivals! Perhaps their only hope is to allow them to have Alsatians chasing them from behind because it seems only a superhuman effort is going to beat Bolt, the Super Human.

Caster Semenya, the 800m Olympic silver medallist, on Tuesday defended herself against allegations that she had not tried to win the two-lap race in London at the weekend.

Semenya, the South African who was forced to undergo gender testing after her 2009 world championships triumph, started poorly in the final, sitting at the back of the field until she produced a late burst to finish second to Mariya Savinova, 1.04 seconds behind the Russian.

Her performance led to speculation by television pundit Colin Jackson, the three-time 110m hurdles world champion, that Semenya had deliberately avoided winning so as not to stir up fresh controversy like that in 2009.

“I tried my best, whatever people say. There is always talk, but these people know nothing about athletics,” Semenya said at Johannesburg International Airport on Tuesday, where she received a heroine’s welcome.

South Africa’s sports minister, Fikile Mbalula, praised Semenya, a shy girl from an obscure rural village in South Africa’s northern-most province of Limpopo, as an inspiration to all those coming from similarly modest upbringings.

“I don’t know about her strategy in the race, but she has made us very proud. Nobody gave her a chance, but she showed the greatest guts of a young African woman,” Mbalula said while choking back tears.

“She has toiled out of difficulty to become a symbol of greatness and has shown that it doesn’t matter where you come from. From her small village in Limpopo, where the people are full of poverty, she has become the symbol of a courageous young woman.”

Semenya’s time of 1:57.23 was top-class and she said she was satisfied with a silver medal, but would be looking to go one better in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

“I am happy with silver, but it was hard work. I said to myself that I must get something from the race and I saw that the other ladies were tired. I had to pull out my turbo-boost,” she smiled.

“I’m concentrating now on next year, the world championships in Moscow, that is my main focus. The Olympics are still four years away and we learn by mistakes so hopefully I can do better next time and win the Olympics,” Semenya said.