Semenya may finally have had enough

For a decade, Caster Semenya kept running as track and field officials scrutinised her body, questioned her integrity, pushed her to take hormone-suppressing medication, and even told her she wasn’t female.

But the Olympic champion may finally have had enough.

Semenya this week gave the strongest hint yet that she’s done with top-level athletics competition. And done, also, with the legal battles she’s been fighting against the IAAF for just about her entire career.

The 28-year-old Semenya said she has signed to play for a South African football club next year and will seemingly be focusing on a new career at home in that sport instead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, where she had a chance to win a third successive gold medal in the 800m.

A “new journey” is how she described it.

If Semenya is indeed retiring from running – there has been no official announcement from her – it will end a saga that has troubled women’s athletics ever since an 18-year-old Semenya arrived as an unknown at the 2009 World Championships, won gold in a stunning show of dominance, and then focused attention on a dilemma so difficult that sport may never completely resolve it.

Semenya was born with the typical male XY chromosome pattern but also female characteristics. She was legally recognised as female at birth and has identified as female her entire life. But her condition also means she has a testosterone level in the typical male range and that, according to disputed research from the IAAF, gives her an unfair athletic advantage over other female runners.

The IAAF decided that Semenya in her natural form should not be allowed to compete in certain events in women’s athletics, including the 800m, where the South African has won two Olympic golds and three world titles. Instead, she should take drugs to change her biology if she wants to run.

Semenya is not the only elite female athlete with a difference of sex development condition, but she’s easily the most successful and the most prominent in taking a stand.

Currently, Semenya is barred from competing at top-level track meets because she has refused to follow the new rules — crafted specifically, she claims, because of her success — that force her to medically reduce her testosterone to a level that track officials are comfortable with.