Semenya’s physiology a testy topic
TRACK: South African 800-metre runner’s testosterone levels have been scrutinized for years
Moments after she cruised to a win in her 800-metre heat on Wednesday morning, Caster Semenya entered the press area under the stands at Olympic Stadium. A reporter asked her to talk. Questions were lobbed from a crowd. The 25-year-old South African gave a shake of her head, sipped some water, and kept walking.
Head down, braids swaying slightly, she kept moving through the twisting laneway, dozens of eyes trained on her the whole way, like she was the star exhibit at a fair. It was exceedingly awkward.
But Semenya’s is an awkward case. At 18, she won the 2009 world championships in Berlin, but the immediate story wasn’t as much about her impressive time — better than one minute, 56 seconds over 800 metres — as her masculine features. Even then, she had a chiselled jaw and broad, muscular shoulders.
Her career has had ups and downs since, but today, with attitudes toward gender, and gender in sport, changing, Semenya might be competing for the first time since she was a little-known teen in what is her natural state. It might also be a state that makes her unbeatable.
If she wins gold on Saturday night, if she approaches a world record that has stood for more than three decades, it will bring that much more attention to a question that sport’s ruling bodies are still trying to figure out: where is the line between a natural gift and an unfair advantage? A gold medal would make it almost impossible for her to wave off those questions with a shake of the head.
Since that first big race in Berlin, Semenya’s biology has been a source of much unverified debate. There were reports she was intersex — someone who has both male and female biological elements — and that her testosterone was well above natural levels in a woman, a condition known as hyperandrogenism. There were reports that she was subjected to intrusive gender testing.
The IAAF, track’s governing body, cleared her to race in 2010. But the IAAF also ruled testosterone had to be within certain acceptable levels in a female competitor, and it has long been believed Semenya took drugs that inhibited her ability to produce testosterone so she could meet those IAAF guidelines.
The Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport, meanwhile, suspended the IAAF rule last summer for two years so more research could be conducted. In the months since, Semenya’s times are much improved. A silver medallist at 800 metres at London 2012, she failed to make the final at the world championships in Beijing last August. But in 2016 she has recorded several low times, and ran a 1:55.33 last month at a meet in Monaco that was a full eight seconds faster than her time at the worlds last year. The belief in track circles is, without medication, she is now able to take full advantage of the extra testosterone her body produces.
The careful reader will note there was a lot of hedging in the previous paragraphs, and that’s because Semenya has said very little about her physiology over the years. Her mother offered the definitive word in the subject in an early interview — “she’s a girl,” she said — and in the years since Semenya has mostly kept private, laughing off the controversy to a South African magazine but otherwise avoiding the details about testosterone or medication.
Last year, she told the BBC: “I am not a fake. I am natural. I am just being Caster.”
Testosterone issues in a female athlete are thorny only because if someone were found to have artificially elevated their levels, they would be subject to doping punishments. With the CAS ruling in effect, naturally elevated levels are, for the moment at least, acceptable. (The IAAF is appealing.)
And though there has been a history of gender testing in sport, society is moving closer to accepting that there never was a gender binary. In that world, how do you decide when a female is “too male” to run as a woman? Those who say gender testing is archaic and cruel make the argument that all kinds of athletes have natural genetic advantages that give them an edge over their competitors. So why draw the line at testosterone?
Semenya’s performance on Saturday — and in the semifinals Friday — could go some way toward answering that question. There have been suspicions that she held back in London to avoid the scrutiny a gold medal would have brought, and there have been rumblings that her races in the lead up to Rio, her fastest in the calendar year, have looked so effortless that she must still be saving another gear. Her time of 1:59.31 in Wednesday’s heat certainly didn’t throw down a gauntlet.
“I am not focused on any world records,” she said trackside, before avoiding the media mob under the stands. “I am focused on enjoying my championship and it’s going to be a tough 800. Times don’t matter but medals matter. I just want to run my own race and so far it’s been very good.”
Whatever happens in the final, Semenya sounded last year like someone who, despite the scrutiny, was at peace.
“I just want to be me,” she told the BBC. “I was born like this. I don’t want any changes.”