Sprinter Caster Semenya now talks about her struggle to prove she’s a woman. She even offered to show her gender to sports leaders.
– If you want to see that I am a woman, I can show my vagina, says Semenya of the accident.
Ever since South Africa took off in 2009, when she won the World Cup gold medal in the 800m in Berlin, she has fought for her right to compete as a woman. After this breakthrough, when I was 18, the athletics world demanded that the fast-footed and muscular Semenya undergo gender tests.
In an interview with HBO Real Sports, which was read by the AP news agency, Semenya said athletics leaders may have thought she had a penis.
– I told them I’m a woman, and if you want to see I’m a woman, I can show you my vagina, okay? Semenya says in the documentary.
Who cut you with a knife
Sex tests showed that the 31-year-old runner was hyper-androgenic, meaning he had very high levels of the male hormone testosterone.
The International Association of Athletics Federations (WA) forced her to take medication to lower her testosterone levels so she could continue competing as a woman. But she didn’t get relief from the medication, which might have been a pill or something similar.
– They made me sick, I gained weight and had panic attacks. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. It was like stabbing yourself with a knife every day. She says, but I had no other choice.
– I was 18, I wanted to run. I wanted to go to the Olympics, and that was the only thing that mattered. I had to make it work.
Two Olympic golds
Semenya fulfilled her dream twice. She won two Olympic gold medals in the 800 metres, in London in 2012 and Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
Medical experts described the forced medication Semenya was forced to undergo as unethical. But WA attorney Jonathan Taylor defends the drug in an interview with HBO Real Sports and says that top experts prescribe the drugs for active women with extremely high testosterone levels.
“Jonathan has to cut his tongue and throw it away,” Semenya says. If he wants to understand how they tortured me (drugs), he can take these drugs himself. Then he will understand.
Aiming for the World Cup
In 2018, the association decided that female athletes with very high levels of testosterone should lower their levels in order to compete at distances between 400m and 1 English mile (1609m). WA believes that hyperandrogenism has a very large advantage over the middle distances. Semenya in recent years has refused to take medication, and therefore has not participated in the 800m in the international competition since 2019. She has missed the 2019 World Cup and the 2021 Olympics.
Anyway, she kept running, but now for longer distances. In March, she broke her personal record of 3,000 meters by nearly ten seconds. She then said that she aims to qualify for the World Cup in Eugene, USA this summer.
– I’m close. If that happens, Semenya was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying.
Semenya also fought his case in court and lost twice – in the Court of Arbitration for Sport Kass and in a Swiss court. It has appealed for the third time, now to the European Court of Human Rights.