Death threats, Semenya and me
Lynsey Sharp reveals how she dealt with online abuse after questioning rival
Given the tumultuous nature of last year, a 12-month Olympic delay and a potential entire missed season do not seem that out of kilter with the way things have gone recently for Lynsey Sharp. “Great things happened and terrible things happened,” summarises the Olympic and world 800-metre finalist, delivering a wry chuckle heard frequently during this interview.
Off the track, she made the snap decision – so quick that she had none of her belongings – to return to Britain from her San Diego home, got engaged to fellow British runner Andrew Butchart and underwent surgery to remove precancerous cells after a smear test raised concerns.
On it, she was left devastated after unexpectedly crashing out of the World Championship heats when convinced she could, and probably should, have won a medal.
Yet, as so often in recent years, it was a subject that only indirectly affects her for which she made the most headlines.
In a non-contact sport that does not pit people in direct head-to-head battles, athletics tends to produce few villains – aside from convicted dopers – to accompany the sport’s many heroes. Sharp, 29, seems to be an exception.
The issue dates back to the Rio 2016 Olympics when an emotional Sharp, having just run a personalbest time to finish sixth in the 800m final, was asked about the situation regarding the winner, Caster Semenya, and her fellow medallists, all of whom are DSD (differences of sex development) athletes.
“It is out of our control and [we’re] pretty much relying on people at the top sorting it out,” Sharp said, while descending into tears in the immediate aftermath. “The public can see how difficult it is… but all we can do is give it our best.”
Four years on and Semenya says she has been “destroyed… mentally and physically” by the living nightmare of attempting to overturn World Athletics rules requiring her to take testosterone-suppressing medication to compete.
Sharp, meanwhile, has faced death threats, with those words from 2016 taking on a life of their own.
A few hours after her premature World Championships exit last September, eNCA, South Africa’s largest news channel, began its sports bulletin with the following words: “We don’t ever like to rejoice in somebody else’s misfortune, but
I think we can make an exception in this case.”
There followed a 2½-minute segment celebrating Sharp’s failure.
Half the sports bulletin was dedicated to a British runner failing to advance from the heats. It is no wonder she refuses to engage with such negativity.
“People think that I just say I don’t read things or watch them, but I genuinely don’t,” she says.
“If people were in my shoes, they would do the same. Nobody needs that amount of negativity about themselves in their life. I’m well aware it’s out there, but what’s the point in me reading it or watching it?
“People still occasionally message me now and ask if I’m going to apologi apologise to Caster. I didn’t do anythin anything, I’m not sure what I’d be apologi apologising for.
“Pe “People think that I’ve actually said worse than I have. It’s been crea created out of very little.”
S Sharp’s understandable desire no longer to discuss the Semenya deb debate in public obscures her we wealth of knowledge, having wr written her dissertation about DS DSD athletes while studying law at E Edinburgh Napier University.
““I’m obviously genuinely inter interested in the topic and have been since I first raced against Caster in 2008,” she says.
“People would assume that when I wrote my dissertation I came to the conclusion that it was very clear cut and they shouldn’t be allowed to compete. That wasn’t the case at all. It was a very balanced argument. It’s not an easy decision.”
The far more troubling issue for Sharp was her poor performance in falling at the first hurdle at the World Championships.
Her build-up to the event had been complicated by a sudden decision last March to remain in Europe, where she had been competing, leave long-term coach Terrence Mahon and not return to the San Diego home she shared with Butchart. It was so unforeseen that Butchart had to pack up her belongings and send them across the Atlantic.
There was no single catalyst for falling out with Mahon, for whom she retains “a tremendous amount of respect”, but disagreements over her training programme meant the relationship disintegrated.
A hasty relocation to Loughborough with Butchart followed and she still maintains she was in “the best shape I’ve ever been in” ahead of the World Championships, only to get her tactics wrong in a slow heat.
So hurt by the missed opportunity, she did not speak about the race for weeks and it still grates that she caused her own downfall with a tactical error: “There’s no way I should have been knocked out in the heats.”
Slowly coming to terms with her exit, Sharp’s spirits were lifted when Butchart proposed on holiday in Turkey, only to be brought crashing down with news that she required surgery after a second smear test – following one on her return from San Diego – showed abnormalities. Only when the results of the removed cells came back 10 days later did she find out they were precancerous.
“It was only afterwards that I thought: ‘Thank God I did have that smear test in March and had it followed up.’ If I hadn’t moved back from America, would I have even found out?”
It is an unknown she tries to spend little time thinking about, but it has made her a vocal advocate for women to have regular smear tests.
The scheduled wedding date of October 2021 means her nuptials should remain untroubled by the Olympics shifting back a year, although the prospect of competing this summer remains uncertain.
With the European Championships cancelled last week, the best hope appears to be low-key regional events which may be put on at the back end of the summer. For now, she is ticking along by training on a nearby tarmac bike path, on which she has marked out 200m splits.
It is not exactly the easy route to success. But there is no change there.
‘People think I said worse than I did. It’s been created out of very little’