Caster Semenya - Man eller kvinna?

It was as a result of Semenya, and the absolutely disastrous handling of that situation, that the policy changed, and until last year, the policy in place said that women could compete only if their testosterone levels were below an upper limit. That upper limit, 10 nmol/L, was set up based on a study done on all the women competing in the World Championships in 2011 and 2013.

Semenya’s performances, under this policy of reducing testosterone, dropped off in a predictable manner. Having run the 1:55.45 at 18, she never got close again, though did win Olympic silver in London (behind a doper), and a World silver in 2011. Last year, she failed to advance beyond the semi-finals in Beijing, and hadn’t even made the qualification mark for the preceding year’s Commonwealth Games. 2:00 had become a significant barrier, when the world record had been plausible at 18.
Now, she is untouchable. People will (and have said) that it’s down to her focused training, recovery from injury and so forth, but I’m not buying that. The change has happened for an obvious reason – the restoration of testosterone levels, and that is thanks to the courts – CAS, the Court of Arbitration for sport, last year ruled that the IAAF could no longer enforce the upper limit of testosterone, and in so doing, cleared the way for Semenya, and at least a handful of others, to return to the advantages that this hormone clears provides an individual. That CAS ruled this way because they felt that there was insufficient evidence for the performance benefits is one of the stupidest, most bemusing legal/scientific decisions ever made.
In any event, the situation now is this – Semenya, plus a few others, have no restriction. It has utterly transformed Semenya from an athlete who was struggling to run 2:01 to someone who is tactically running 1:56. My impression, having seen her live and now in the Diamond League, is that she could run 1:52, and if she wanted to, would run a low 48s 400m and win that gold in Rio too.

I fear that that much of the anticipation for the upcoming Rio Olympics will be overshadowed by the specter of intersex athletes dominating some events in women’s athletics, the premier sport of the games. It is also unfortunate that many people will blame the medal-winning intersex athletes whose only crime is to compete with the gifts that nature gave them. The real problem is that sports need some policy governing intersex athletes and currently there is none.

While Caster Semenya has gotten most of the media attention, she is far from the only presumably intersex athlete to have competed at a very high level in athletics. In fact two of the three medalists in the 800 meter race at the recent indoor world championships are probably intersex. It is very possible that we could see an all intersex podium in the 800 in Rio, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see as many as five intersex women in the eight-person final. There are potential intersex medalists in other running events too. The mutations that we are talking about are very rare, and these women are hugely over-represented.