New bid to force Semenya to take medication
CASTER SEMENYA’S right to compete without being forced to take medication will be tested again when the IAAF present a new case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Lawyers representing athletics’ governing body will argue that ‘to preserve fair competition in the female category, it is necessary to require DSD athletes (differences of sexual development) to reduce their testosterone down to female levels before they compete at international level’. The issue remains extremely divisive and is a subject that even splits the opinion of scientists who consider themselves experts in the field. But the outcome of a five-day hearing that is due next week in Lausanne could conclude with South Africa’s double Olympic champion and other DSD athletes being made to take drugs against their wishes if they want to keep racing. A statement issued by the IAAF last night read: ‘The IAAF is not classifying any DSD athlete as male. To the contrary, we accept their legal sex without question, and permit them to compete in the female category. ‘However, if a DSD athlete has testes and male levels of testosterone, they get the same increases in bone and muscle size and strength and increases in haemoglobin that a male gets when they go through puberty, which is what gives men such a performance advantage over women.’ In 2015 Indian sprinter Dutee Chand won a case against the IAAF at the CAS which forced the governing body to abandon its rules on testosterone levels for intersex athletes. And last year the United Nations’ human rights special procedures body said such regulations would ‘contravene international human rights’.