Caster Semenya loses appeal over IAAF testosterone rules

CAS ruled that the IAAF regulations are needed to ensure fair competition between athletes who compete in events ranging from 400 metres to a mile, previously calling the hearing one of the most important ever to appear before the court.

It means that Semenya and other affected athletes hoping to compete at the World Championships in Doha in September would have to start taking medication to lower their testosterone level to below the required five (5) nmol/L within one week.

The Olympic 800-metres champion has since released a statement, saying: "For a decade the IAAF has tried to slow me down, but this has actually made me stronger. The decision of the CAS will not hold me back. I will once again rise above and continue to inspire young women and athletes in South Africa and around the world."

The media release stated: "The panel found that the DSD Regulations are discriminatory, but the majority of the panel found that, on the basis of the evidence submitted by the parties, such discrimination is a necessary, reasonable and proportionate means of achieving the IAAF’s aim of preserving the integrity of female athletics in the Restricted Events."

The IAAF believe the regulations are necessary to "preserve fair competition in the female category", and have received a large amount of support from current and former athletes, but the governing body has also come in for criticism from human rights organisations over their wish to medically alter naturally produced levels of testosterone, with the United Nations Human Rights Council adopting a resolution in support of Semenya in March.

The South African will be the most high-profile athlete to be affected, but others include 2018 Olympic silver medallist in the 800m, Francine Niyonsaba of Burundi.

Semenya took potential steps to reinvent her career last week when she won the 5000m at the South African Athletics Championships in a modest time of 16:05.97, an event that would allow her to compete outside of the IAAF regulations.

It's a sensitive subject, but this decision is a shock if not necessarily a surprise. The debate around the issue has also been damaged by former athletes erroneously conflating the case of Semenya and others like her with transgender competitors (that is, people assigned as male at birth transitioning to living as female later in their lives). With the details remaining confidential, it is difficult to assess exactly what CAS based their judgement on, bearing in mind the reasonably limited scientific evidence available at the moment. Ultimately, fine athletes like Caster Semenya are being told to modify their bodies if they wish to compete - and let us not forget, this has not been a case of deception or an attempt to gain an unwarranted advantage.

Semenya's brilliance is natural; it is easy to argue that a distance runner with a more elastic Achilles tendon also has a physical advantage, yet she is not asked to take medication or have an operation to prevent that; nor is a basketball player asked to reduce her height to make it fairer for the others; nor is a rower with vast lung capacity instructed to incapacitate herself. To order Semenya to take medication - and of course taking hormonal drugs may have a long-term health effect - is surely much the same. The IAAF's claim that they want to create fair competition for "all women" seems very nice, but of course it is doing so at the expense of Semenya and others like her; the CAS's finding that the regulation is discriminatory but acceptably so is just laughable.

Semenya has been nothing but dignified since the authorities began humiliating her in public - remember, she was still a teenager when they forced her to undergo sex testing. This new ruling from the IAAF, specifying limits only in those distances in which Semenya competes, unsurprisingly raised eyebrows when it was first announced, particularly coming only a few years after sprinter Dutee Chand's case highlighted the lack of evidence that testosterone in hyperandrogenous women increases competitive advantage. It is possible that Semenya will opt to step up a distance - and equally possible that the regulations will also then be extended to those categories too.

The end result of this entire shameful business seems likely to be the loss of one of the greatest natural middle-distance runners of all time - regardless of sex or gender.