Into an ugly firestorm

that’s not her fault though. I like her, I respect her, I do want to race her.”

More diplomatic contenders have simply batted away the question, at least in public and at least so far. Malicious rumour, so rife in competitive sport, suggests that any number of them would love to see the issue blow up. And the issue is this: how much credit for Semenya’s performance should go to a feisty young Indian runner who successfully challenged the status quo around gender testing?

Testosterone

Semenya’s return to world-beating form has become increasingly evident with the approach of the Rio Olympics, which, given the rate of attrition among athletes approaching their 30s, could be her last. She had been building towards such performances for 20 months, coach Jean Verster previously told the M&G.

“All kinds of people will always try to make publicity for themselves when it comes to high-profile athletes,” Verster said on speculation about Semenya’s testosterone levels. “Unfortunately, you are always going to get people like that.”

Semenya herself has also refused to comment on the speculation about her legal position, stressing that her focus was on training and her performance.

That has not stopped others from seeing more than just correlation between Semenya’s improved performance and a change in the legal status of testosterone.

“The change has happened for an obvious reason,” said sports science professor Ross Tucker in May on Semenya’s great race times, referring the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s ruling against the upper limit the IAAF had imposed on legal levels of testosterone for women.

Statistics suggest that there are any number of high-profile professional athletes who, biologically, do not fall easily into the male/female split used in sport. Most of them will never be identified thanks to medical privacy rules. Semenya is not among those.

“I have been subjected to unwarranted and invasive scrutiny of the most intimate and private details of my being,” Semenya said in a 2010 statement, after the IAAF confirmed she had been subjected to “gender verification testing” and that those tests had been not been immediately conclusive.

‘The conjecture is that she is intersex,” Harper puts it bluntly.

That conjecture, in turn, leads to the assumption that Semenya had higher than average levels of testosterone, and would have been obliged to seek medical treatment to bring those levels down to what the IAAF considered appropriate for women.

In July 2015, however, Indian sprinter Dutee Chand satisfied the Court of Arbitration for Sport that the IAAF’s testosterone rule was based on very dubious evidence. The rule was suspended for two years.

That, Tucker said, “cleared the way for Semenya, and at least a handful of others, to return to the advantages that this hormone clearly provides an individual”.

Legally, by the precedent accepted by the IOC, women with higher levels of testosterone are not considered to have an advantage over others. Scientifically the matter is in dispute; testosterone’s effects before birth are very different from its effects in adults, and those effects vary widely based on genetic factors still poorly understood. Factually, nothing is actually publicly known about Semenya’s medical status — but some things have come to be taken for granted.

“I know the IAAF pushed her to push her hormones down and whatnot with medication,” said Martinez.

The final assumption, then, is that when the IAAF stopped being able to demand such treatment, Semenya must have stopped her treatment. With direct information on her private medical affairs out of bounds, however, the assumption is being measured against her performance.

So if Semenya wins, at least some will credit testosterone. If she loses, though, testosterone will still get the blame.

When Semenya came in second in the 2012 Olympic 800m — losing to a now alleged drug cheat — she was accused of playing politics. Second place, some observers speculated, would lay to rest suggestions of an unfair hormonal advantage.

The suspicion did not dissipate, and even Semenya’s fans and supporters are prone to worry that she has intentionally underperformed.

“Caster, you have been quiet,” US doctoral student Eleni Schirmer wrote this week in an open letter to Semenya published by sports broad- caster ESPN. “Maybe you have been holding back, not wanting to show the world just how fast you can be. Perhaps you are scared that your victory will provoke accusations about your right to compete as a woman, provoke more interrogation of your body.”

Schirmer told Semenya she would be cheering for her, and to “run fast”.

The IAAF will have to present datarich evidence to win reinstatement of the testosterone rule, but anecdotal though they are, Olympic performances will still be top of mind come July 2017, when the next major hearing on the issue is due.

In the time since 2009, many people have become better educated about the range of human gender and sexuality, Harper said. That may count for something.

“I certainly hope [the debate] will be more civilised than the furore that erupted in 2009, but I guess one never knows,” she said.

In the same interval Semenya tentatively confirmed her informal wedding to a long-time, female partner, with a predictable response from the trollosphere.

But the ASA is not worried. “The best thing is that Caster is not stressed with this,” said Skhosana. “She is mentally equal to the task.”