She doesn’t really know what she will find there at the end, but Caster Semenya continues to advance as best she can on the path she is forced to take to hope one day to appear at the start of a race again. . “I’m not going to be ashamed because I’m different,” said at the BBC the hyperandrogenic South African athlete Caster Semenya, saying she was determined to “fight” to the end for women, “not taken seriously” by the sporting authorities.
The double Olympic champion (2012 and 2016) and triple world champion in the 800 meters is deprived of her favorite race because she refuses hormonal treatment to lower her testosterone levels. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found her to be a victim of discrimination at first instance.
“At the end of the day, I know I’m different. I don’t care about medical terms and what they tell me. Being born without a uterus or with internal testicles. I am no less a woman,” Semenya emphasized. “These are the differences I was born with and I embrace them. I’m not going to be ashamed because I’m different.”
Semenya has a natural excess of male sex hormones and has been engaged in a standoff with the International Athletics Federation (World Athletics) for more than ten years, whose regulations prevent her from running 800 m. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), subsequently supported by Swiss justice, confirmed the latter.
“Women’s sport is not taken seriously”
The 32-year-old South African took the case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which ruled in her favor. The judgment rendered in July does not, however, invalidate the World Athletics regulations and does not directly pave the way for his return to 800m without treatment. The Swiss authorities have also obtained referral to the Grand Chamber of the ECHR, a sort of appeal body whose decisions are final.
This legal battle, “this is why we are fighting for women’s sport,” Semenya told the BBC. “The importance of women’s sport is not taken seriously and we need to take charge of our bodies. We must decide what is good for us. It’s not up to another gender to decide what we should look like.”