Semenya ruling creates new doping dilemma
Everyone is supposed to be doing their best to rid sports of doping.
Yet, in a baffling decision yesterday, South African star Caster Semenya was ordered to take drugs if she wants to keep running for championships.
Talk about sending the wrong message.
In a debate that has been raging for the better part of a decade, Semenya keeps getting singled out because her body naturally produces higher levels of testosterone than most females.
While this trait — which her attorney describes as “a genetic gift” — undoubtedly gives Semenya an edge on the track, why is that any different than the physical advantages possessed by all elite athletes?
No one made Ted Williams wear a patch over one eye when he stepped to the plate because his freakishly good vision helped him hit a baseball better than just about anyone else. No one thought it would be fair to tie Muhammad Ali’s ankles together because he was so much faster and quicker than the heavyweight boxers of his era.
No one wanted to put up a higher goal for Wilt Chamberlain to shoot at because he was far taller than most basketball players in the 1950s and 60s. No one ordered Michael Phelps to swim in a weighted vest because of his long torso, double-jointed ankles and a metabolism that produced less lactic acid than other athletes.
Yet the Court of Arbitration for Sport essentially did that to Semenya. The highest court in world sports issued an admittedly discriminatory ruling that will force the two-time Olympic champion and women like her to take medication to suppress their levels of the male sex hormone if they want to compete in certain track and field events.
“That’s so ironic,” said Joel Maxcy, head of the Department of Sport Management at Drexel University in Philadelphia. “The whole performance-enhancing substance world has been about not taking things. But here, they’re going to force her to take something. To me, that’s very ironic and very odd and not right.”
CAS, it seems, is leading us into a scary new world. While trying to eradicate the persistent scourge of PEDs, they’ve opened the door to PRDs — performance reducing drugs.
“This sort of goes away from the whole concept of sports and the star athlete,” Maxcy said. “We’ve always understood that they have genetic gifts that put them above and beyond. I don’t see why this should be any different than that. She seems to be a specific target. But the justification for this ruling is that they need to level the playing field.”
That’s nonsense, of course. “There’s a lot of body shaming going on here,” said Mark Conrad, director of the sports business programme at Fordham United, who has followed Semenya’s case closely. “A lot of stereotypes come into play. That’s unfair to her. She’s a very good runner. She could have been born with this and still been doing 10-minute miles.”
This was not a promising start.