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Olympic 800m champ Caster Semenya to be forced to use daily pill to cut testosterone levels or move to longer distances
25th April 2018,
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CONTROVERSIAL 800 metres star Caster Semenya could be forced to take a pill to cut her testosterone levels in new rules being introduced by the IAAF.
The world athletics governing body is set to announce new rules to curb naturally occurring levels of the hormone.
Semenya, 27, clinched gold in Rio two years ago and was awarded retrospective gold at London 2012 after Russia's Mariya Savinova had hes stripped for doping.
But she remains one of the most controversial athletes in history, because of her hyperandrogenism, a condition which sparks excessive levels of male sex hormones such as testosterone.
The South African clinched 800m and 1500m gold at this month's Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast.
Semenya will be hit by new rules that apply from distances from 400m to a mile that will force athletes to take medication if their levels of testosterone are too high.
What is hyperandrogenism? And why is Caster Semenya so controversial?
HYPERANDROGENISM is when the female body has high levels of male sex hormones such as testosterone.
The conditions tend to include acne, seborrhea (inflamed skin), hair loss on the scalp and increased body mass.
Semenya, who won the 800m and 1,500m on the Gold Coast, could see her career brought to a halt.
After winning gold in the 2009 World Championships by beating her best by four seconds, Semenya was subjected to gender testing.
She was banned from international competitions for almost a year before being cleared by the International Association of Athletics Federations.
The IAAF believe that all other hyperandrogenic athletes should not compete unless they try to curb their naturally high testosterone levels.
Following her case, testosterone testing was brought in to identify cases where testosterone levels were elevated above an arbitrary level.
If women were over it, they were required to lower it with hormone treatment.
But it has faced legal challenges from female athletes who claim their high testosterone levels are "entirely natural" and that the IAAF rule was "discriminatory against women".
It could force Semenya to take up the 5,000m or the 10,000m, distances she is less suited to.
After she exploded on to the scene at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, claiming gold, she was targeted by similar rules by the IAAF.
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Her form afterwards dipped and she was beaten by Savinova at the 2011 World Championships in Daegu and then at the London Games.
The IAAF council has already given the thumbs up to limits on naturally produced levels of testosterone and the IOC is set to follow suit ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Games.
Joanna Harper, 61, is a transgender athlete and IOC advisory committee member, who backed the 2015 relaxation but has now recommended the testosterone reduction.
She said: "It appears they are going to act on the recommendation."
Harper, who ran marathons in two hours and 23 minutes as a young man, conceded that even after hormone treatment, transgender women could have an advantage.
She added: "Transgender women after hormone therapy are taller, bigger and stronger on average than women who are cisgender [those whose gender identity matches their birth gender].
"But that does not [necessarily] make it unfair.
"Let's say we are talking about a boxer.
"Boxing is divided by weight classes, and in a given weight class a trans woman boxer is not going to be bigger than the women she is fighting.
"In high levels of sport, transgender women are underrepresented.
"That indicates that whatever physical advantages trans women have and they certainly exist they are not nearly as large as the sociological disadvantages."
CONTROVERSIAL 800 metres star Caster Semenya could be forced to take a pill to cut her testosterone levels in new rules being introduced by the IAAF.
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