Two-time Olympic champion Caster Semenya has won a legal battle against testosterone regulations in track and field. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that courts had violated their rights.
Rio de Janeiro 2016, Summer Olympics, Women’s 800 Meters Final. “Now Caster Semenya is serious and a few quick steps will bring her forward. And looking at the scoreboard will give her a little more confidence,” it said at the time ARD-Comment. “Because she knows from the course of the season that she has a chance to pull this thing off.”
Caster Semenya pulls it off and clearly wins. For the second time Olympic gold for the South African, who is also a three-time world champion in the 800 meters. But even at her first World Championship gold medal, in Berlin in 2009, Semenya’s victory was not commented on impartially.
Her broad shoulders, her deep voice became the subject. And her Italian competitor Elisa Cusma Piccione asserted offensively: “For me she is not a woman, she is a man.”
World association sees unfair advantage
Caster Semenya is a woman. But her body has evolved particularly when it comes to gender. DSD – “Differences of Sexual Development” – is the name of this physical peculiarity. It causes the affected women to have increased testosterone levels.
The International Athletics Federation (IAAF) considers elevated testosterone levels in women with DSD to be a problem. Although studies come to different conclusions, the IAAF sees a performance advantage in women with elevated testosterone levels. Competing with other athletes is unfair.
The association has therefore repeatedly made new rules for women with DSD in recent years. Most recently, the rules were tightened significantly in March. Now affected athletes have to reduce their testosterone levels twice as much as before with medication in extreme cases. In addition, all track and field athletes are now affected and not just runners.
“I can never be what I’m not”
Semenya refuses to follow these rules. She no longer wants to take testosterone-lowering drugs. The rules of the IAAF are discriminatory and an encroachment on their personal rights. “These constant questions: am I a woman, am I a man? Obviously it’s hurtful, derogatory and insulting,” she told the South African television broadcaster eNCA. “But one thing is certain for me: I can never be what I am not.”
Semenya had sued before the International Court of Arbitration for Sport CAS and before the Swiss Federal Court, which reviews the CAS judgments. But so far without success. Unlike now the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). With a narrow decision of four to three judges, Strasbourg says: The International Sports Court and the Swiss Federal Supreme Court violated Semenya’s rights.
She would not have had the chance to have her interests adequately recognized there. The obligation to lower testosterone levels with drugs is a serious intervention and can be discriminatory. On the other hand, there is little evidence that women with elevated testosterone levels have significant advantages over the middle distance. And the side effects of testosterone lowering could be significant. Because the courts did not weigh all of this sufficiently, Semenya’s human rights were violated.