Caster Semenya lost her appeal Wednesday against rules designed to decrease naturally high testosterone levels in some female runners.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport’s panel of three judges gave a complex verdict and “dismissed both requests for arbitration” from Semenya and the governing body of track and field.
Announcing its ruling, CAS agreed that the IAAF’s policy was “discriminatory” to athletes with differences in sexual development (DSDs) such as Semenya. However two of three arbitrators accepted the IAAF’s argument that high testosterone in female athletes confers significant advantages in size, strength and power from puberty onwards, and said the policy was “necessary, reasonable and proportionate” to ensure fair competition in women’s sport.
“I know that the IAAF’s regulations have always targeted me specifically,” she added. “For a decade the IAAF has tried to slow me down, but this has actually made me stronger. The decision of the CAS will not hold me back. I will once again rise above and continue to inspire young women and athletes in South Africa and around the world.”
It means that all DSD athletes, who are usually born with internal testes, will have to reduce their testosterone to below five nmol/L for at least six months if they want to compete internationally all distances from 400m to a mile. The IAAF, which welcomed the news, said its policy would come into place on 8 May.
Semenya, a two-time Olympic champion in the 800 meters, will now be forced to medicate to suppress her testosterone levels if she wants to defend her world title in September in Doha, Qatar.
Still, the CAS panel “strongly encouraged” the IAAF to note its concerns when it applies the rules — which the judges believe might have to be modified in future to be fair.
Semenya, who has long argued that her unique genetic gifts should be celebrated not regulated, said she would not give up her fight and believed that the DSD regulations would be one day overturned.
“I know that the IAAF’s regulations have always targeted me specifically,” she added. “For a decade the IAAF has tried to slow me down, but this has actually made me stronger. The decision of the CAS will not hold me back. I will once again rise above and continue to inspire young women and athletes in South Africa and around the world.”
What? That is a loss to even our Zambian boys soccer team who have too LOW male features. Caster is female, but runs faster and stronger than most boys.
If she had won we could have appealed to have Chipolopolo boys play in Shepolopolo.
SHE IS A MAN!!
They should create a category of mixed gender people at the Olympics.
Chi mudala
The hypocrisy of women.
After demanding equal pay to men like in tennis and the workplace , they don’t want to compete with someone dressed as a woman , who is legally a woman
If she was American they would never have dared.
@ Benzu my thoughts exactly, President Trump could have just tweeted to protect an American citizen and the whole case would have come to end. Who determines how much testorone level should be one body! if a man takes pills to reduce his testorone levels, can he be allowed compete with women? This is dihumanizing and I hate it.
Stupid reasoning. For this to be applicable, it should mean then that all female athletes should have exactly the same hormone levels just before the race, which is practically impossible. Most successful female athletes have naturally unusually high levels of the hormone and it will be exciting to see how they will regulate these if they will persue their warped line of reasoning
Racist IAAF targeting Africans! Is there going to be a law to level the economic playing field too? Our African athletes are already disadvantaged and it’s an uphill battle to just get to compete. Africa should come up with its own games.
she has xy chromosomes. so she’s scientifically male
she if she still wants to compete as a female she’s been advised to take meds that would lower her testosterone levels to those of females. otherwise having her compete as is gives her an unfair advantage over other females with XX chromosomes. no different than doping because high testosterone give an athlete certain advantages such as building stronger/bigger muscles, bones….
I feel bad because she’s African, but can’t fight with nature, nurture you can argue with, science is science.
*****ic comment
Like others have said it is simply BCOZ SHE IS A BLACK AFRICAN!! All “international systems” in this world are controlled by whites in west! They can’t stand to see a black person excell,doing better than them over and over! Like @3 Luger has said,are they ever going to level hormone levels for all competitors? Talent is using/developing one’s natural gifts for one’s good and that of mankind so why start penalizing some one for there natural attributes!IF SHE WAS WHITE THEY COULD HAVE BEEN CHEERING HER ALL THE WAY UP TO RETIREMENT AND ENTER HER IN WORLD RECORDS!!
@Zambians.. i agree about how whites/west always want to be seen to the best at everything.
in this case it’s very complicated. she has xy chromosomes, take a moment and digest that and see how that lines up at the starting line with those with only the xx chromosomes, imagine for a moment that you’re woman’ (xx) and are at the starting line with someone with xy, would you say you’re starting off on an equal running field?
Kenyans and Ethiopians dominate the xcountry stage and they are all black, the whites have accepted defeat in that arena.
caster has a huge advantage over fellow athletes due to her high testosterone and most likely that’s what can attribute to how she blows away the competition
i don’t know if you’re an athletic individual or not, but it’s for this…
Mr. Semenya should never have raced with the ladies in the first place. I sure his/her wife would agree.
i don’t know if you’re an athletic individual or not, but it’s for this reason that doping is a big deal because there are substances that once taken can increase testosterone levels in those individuals. in caster’s case it happens naturally because of the y chromosome in her genes.
i know this’ unprecedented case as there’s never been a case like this before.
@7,8mukolwe,thanx for the logical explaination BUT my concern is that its not her fault! I reckon if she was White they could have passed her for someone who has “manly features” but is a female.The issue of Ethiopians and Kenya is something they have accepted grudgingly,you can even judge from their commentary when they sometimes say ” these are good runners not just for sport but they are fighting to run away from poverty” .They have been doing doping tests on Kenyans which sometimes produce contentious results!
oh trust me i know how biased they are, makes me really mad. don’t even get me started on that. speaking of the marathon runners from east Africa, actually one of the schools i went to sent their top athletics director with some runners, they got imbedded and immersed in the Kenyan system, they ate the same ugali, followed the same training regime as the Kenyans, there were notable improvements in their performances but they couldn’t beat them. it’s to do with their lungs from childhood being born and brought up on the rift valley. it’s not every Kenyan that can run, it’s only those from the rift valley
back to caster, you’re right, if she were American, they’d have found some loophole in the system and that’s what her legal team ought to have focused. going by science, the…
@ 9 Mukolwe,I understand you,thanks for your insights!!
SO MAPOLO MAKES SOMEONE RUN FASTER?
So if she’s got *****internally what sex is Semanya? Very sorry state of affairs. She didn’t choose to be what she’s.
For Caster he has always had an advantage over the female athletes; He has competed 27 times and has won them all, with ease, in fact without sweat. Let him compete against other fellow men if he doesn’t want a reduction in testosterone levels. It is a case of the love of money, which is the root cause of all evil – God forbid.