With a few seconds to go in the women’s 800 meters, the group of athletes was tightly packed.
Then on the final straightaway
Three years later,
the South African runner was at a court appealing a ban
that could keep her from defending her title
at the next Olympics.
She wasn’t being banned because she cheated,
but because sports officials had decided that she
no longer qualified as a female athlete.
“So effectively you’re saying to her:
you no longer belong in sport!’”
“I cannot stop because of people say, ‘Nooo!
She looks like a man!’
“Is the new world champion of the women’s 800 meter race, really a woman at all?”
“There is no scientific test or anything that can define a human."
"...there will be two X chromosomes..."
“We have drawn the line between women’s and men’s sport.”
"...being who we are so that we can be the best that we can be.”
“Such allegations, if I may say, they are not my business.
You understand?
So for me, they do their job. I do my job.
I do me. They do them.
From the start, Semenya’s career has been defined by two things...
“Brilliant run for the South African!”
...winning races and defending her identity as a female athlete.
“...and she’s breaking away!”
Back in 2009, she won the 800 meter world championship.
“Semenya looks over her shoulder and she’s away!”
But soon after her victory, sports authorities began questioning
whether she was, in fact, a woman.
“...well that smashes the world list!”
“They are looking for proof that South Africa’s golden girl is not a boy.”
“There is doubt about the fact that this person is a lady...is a woman.”
In South Africa her win was celebrated.
"She is a female. She won!"
But the top governing body for athletics, The IAAF, selected Semenya for testing
to determine whether she is female.
Most recently, their criteria for female competitors
has been testosterone: a hormone produced by both men and women.
Semenya has naturally high levels of testosterone
and the IAAF claims that there is a
significant connection between high testosterone and athletic performance.
But it's more complicated than that.
“Testosterone is related to lean body mass and building of muscle.
But it's not the only thing that contributes to that.”
This is Katrina Karkazis, is a bioethicist who advocates on behalf of athletes like Semenya.
Testosterone is not the only factor that is important for an individual's athletic performance.
There are not only other physiological factors: that could be V02 max, heart size, any number of things.
But there are factors that don’t have to do with someone’s physiology.
Factors like nutrition, coaching, and equipment all play into an athlete’s performance.
So it’s unclear how testosterone can be singled out as the defining factor.
But there’s another way to think about eliminating female athletes based on testosterone...
Like many Olympians, Semenya’s body has natural advantages that can help her perform.
"...Michael Phelps stands 6' 4"..."
For swimmer Michael Phelps, it was a long torso,
wide feet, and other features glorified in Olympic promos.
“...his size 14 feet might as well be flippers!”
But unlike Phelps, Semenya is being penalized for a naturally occurring hormone.
That’s because sports officials don’t divide athletics by the size of your hand,
or your foot,
but they do draw a line between men and women.
The problem is, the criteria that’s used to draw that line and it’s always been problematic.
Charlotte Cooper won gold in 1900, the first year women were included at the Olympics.
Since then, more and more women have competed and stood on Olympic podiums.
But by the 1960s, officials became skeptical that successful female athletes
might actually be men disguised as women.
Polish sprinter Ewa Klobukowska, for example, had won bronze running the women’s 100 meters
at the 1964 Olympics.
A few years later, officials made sex testing mandatory for female athletes
at the 1966 European Track and Field Championships
and Klobukowska was forced to undergo inspection.
She was physically examined in what was called a “nude parade”:
where female athletes were examined by a panel of doctors who would
inspect their genitals to confirm their sex.
Klobukowska passed her test and qualified as female in 1966,
but the next year officials replaced physical exams with chromosomal testing,
meaning she would have to be tested all over again.
Old sex ed films taught that a chromosome pairing of XX from a mother and father means a child will be female.
“...and this always means a girl.”
And an XY pairing will create a male.
“...that’s right, a boy!”
The chromosomes we’re born with are part of sex,
which also takes into account genetic, physical, and hormonal information.
It’s different from gender, which is the way someone identifies in the world
as a woman, a man, or nonbinary, or something else.
Beyond the typical categories of XX females and XY males,
"...that's right, a boy!"
There are many other ways a body can develop.
People who have differences of sexual development,
or DSD, are also known as intersex
and many people can reach sexual maturity without ever knowing they have a DSD.
When sports officials changed the sex testing criteria, Klobukowska failed the new version
and she was banned from competing as female despite having passed the female exam a year before.
By the 2000s, chromosome testing fell out of favor and in 2011 officials introduced
a testosterone limit.
Dutee Chand, an Indian sprinter who naturally produces high levels of testosterone
was put through the new test in 2014.
The testosterone limit for female athletes had been set at 10 nanomoles per liter,
which the IAAF considered the lower end of normal male levels.
Chand failed her test and was banned from competing as female.
She appealed the decision, arguing that the IAAF lacked scientific evidence
linking high testosterone to performance.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport agreed with her and lifted the ban.
In doing so, they said the IAAF needed evidence showing a link
between high testosterone and increased performance.
The decision allowed Chand and other athletes,
including Caster Semenya,
to compete at the 2016 Olympics in Rio.
But in 2018, authorities returned with a new testosterone limit, and this time they had evidence
that female athletes with high testosterone outperformed in certain events.
But here’s the catch: he IAAF commissioned the study
the evidence came from and the data has been questioned by members of the scientific community.
Despite the scrutiny, the IAAF set
the new testosterone limit even lower, at 5 nanomoles per liter, and only applied it to
track distances between 400 meters and the mile,
which includes all the events that Semenya typically runs.
It’s the reason Semenya was banned.
But before the ban could take affect, she was at the Court of Arbitration for Sport
to fight her right to compete.
"...can we have a turnaround? Turn around for a second?"
She would lose her appeal.
“The Court of Arbitration for Sport dismissed the South African star’s appeal, meaning
she’ll now have to take drugs to lower her testosterone levels if she wants to compete.”
“..a landmark ruling against Olympic gold medalist Caster Semenya...”
“She will not be able to compete in the 400 and the 800 meters and in the 1500 meters.”
The ban would require Semenya to undergo medical treatment to lower her testosterone,
which could potentially cause harmful side effects.
This is something Semenya has spoken out against in the past.
A few years ago she told the BBC:
“I’d rather just be natural, you know, be who I am.
I was born like this.
So I don’t want any changes, so yeah.”
The United Nations has supported Semenya and were
joined by the World Medical Association in criticizing the ban.
“...and she said she doesn’t want to take this type of medication and I think she is right."
“It’s entirely unethical to administer drugs to someone who doesn’t need them.”
Semenya isn’t the only athlete affected.
The other top two runners in Rio,
silver medalist Francine Niyonsaba and bronze medalist Margaret Wambui
have also said they were affected by the ruling.
Meaning all three podium finishers from Rio might be banned from defending their title
at the next Olympics unless they take steps to regulate their natural levels of testosterone.
For their part, IAAF officials described the regulation as discriminatory, but necessary.
“Such discrimination is a necessary, reasonable, and proportionate means of achieving the IAAF’s
objective of preserving the integrity of female athletics...”
The ruling also upholds a policy that only athletes identified as suspicious need to be tested.
That means deciding who is tested can depend on an athlete’s appearance and
it might be that non-white athletes from the global South, like Chand, Semenya,
and the other top finishers in Rio are being selected for testing because
they don’t fit somebody’s stereotype of what a female looks like.
Confusion about Caster Semenya’s case has led to misunderstanding and
news outlets have wrongly portrayed her as transgender.
She isn’t. And the problem of dividing athletes by sex
has nothing to do with their gender.
It’s rooted in sex and athletic officials inability to find a criteria that will fairly
divide athletes into the two categories of men and women.
History shows that whenever sports are divided by sex,
the athletes who qualify as female change depending on the criteria used to draw that line.
“It's now 10 years that the IAAF have scrutinized Caster Semenya and tried to keep her out of sport
or at least to slow her down.”
But the scrutiny hasn’t stopped her.
After losing her appeal this year, Semenya brought the case to another court that agreed
to suspend the ban for the time being.
In the meantime, she continues to keep running.
“If she was trying to make a statement she’ll make it here in the last 100 meters.”
She ran a race just before the ban was set to begin.
“Impressive and dominant performance by Caster Semenya.”
After winning it, she was asked what comes next.
“What happens for you now?”
“I keep training, I keep running. So, doesn’t matter!”
"I’m just gonna enjoy my life and then live it!"
"You try to be in front of me? I jump you. So, that's how life it is."