The Caster Semenya controversy
Last Saturday, Caster Semenya won the women’s 800m in one minute and 55.28 seconds, said Andy Bull in The Guardian. It was the fifth-fastest time in Olympic history – and it was one of the most controversial. This time it wasn’t about drugs – it was about the fact that the hyperandrogenic South African has unusually high testosterone levels.
No female athlete has ever come under “such brutal scrutiny” as Semenya, said Jeré Longman in The New York Times. After her victory in the 2009 World Championships, at the tender age of 18, she was called a man by many rivals, subjected to invasive tests and temporarily barred from races. The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) then introduced new rules obliging hyperandrogenic athletes to reduce their testosterone levels – so Semenya started taking hormones, as a result of which her running times slowed. But after a court ruling last year, the restriction was lifted – and Semenya, as she showed in Rio, was running faster than ever. The IAAF was right to penalise women with abnormal testosterone levels, said Ross Tucker in the Daily Mail, because it gives “an unfair advantage”. For every women’s track athletics world record, there are at least 8,000 men who have run faster. And why is that? Testosterone makes them stronger. If it isn’t used as a “dividing line” between men’s and women’s sport, women will “disappear from most elite sport”. Not surprisingly, the IAAF wants its restrictions reintroduced.
But it’s not just testosterone that makes the difference, said Olga Khazan in The Atlantic. There were several hyperandrogenic athletes in Rio: one of them, Indian sprinter Dutee Chand, brought the case against the IAAF last year. But it didn’t do her any good: she didn’t make it beyond the heats of the 100m. No one denies that extra testosterone is an advantage, but so are the other “unorthodox features” that give athletes an edge: Michael Phelps’s flipper-like feet, for instance. We must accept that to be an Olympian is “to be abnormal”.