Caster Semenya has accused athletics’ bosses of pursuing a vendetta against her — and the man who coached Jess Ennis-Hill to global glory agrees.
The two-time Olympic 800m champion failed on Wednesday in her attempt to block a new rule which restricts testosterone levels in female runners competing specifically in track events from 400m to the mile.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) decreed that athletes with ‘differences of sexual development’ (DSD) must either take medication in order to compete, or change to another distance.
The controversial judgement prompted Semenya, whose testosterone levels are naturally elevated due to a condition known as hyperandrogenism, to blast: “The IAAF’s regulations have always targeted me specifically.”
The South African won support from Toni Minichiello, who devoted much of his career to helping Ennis-Hill savour the same Olympic glory.
“Do men run faster over 5000m?” he asked. “Yes, they do. Do they throw further? Yes, they do.
“They’ve got more testosterone. So does testosterone help you to run distances from a 5k to a marathon faster, to throw and to jump? You’d say so. Yet this rule applies to none of those events.
“So to me it does look like they are targeting Semenya.
Who is Caster Semenya? Olympic champion profiled after losing controversial legal case
“I am uncomfortable that it seems to be a rule that affects such a small percentage of athletes as opposed to one that supports the whole of the sport. I don’t agree or disagree with Caster’s CAS ruling, but if that is athletics’ rule it should be across the board. Unless it permeates all women’s sport, it looks like your targeting a minority; it looks a bit personal.
“I actually think doping is a bigger problem than this. Are the IAAF testing more? I don’t think so. Are they testing deeper into the ranking lists? No.”
Semenya, 28, had requested the DSD Regulations be thrown out, labelling them “discriminatory, unnecessary, unreliable and disproportionate”.
But while CAS found that the rules for athletes with DSD were discriminatory it decided that discrimination was “necessary, reasonable and proportionate” to protect “the integrity of female athletics”.
Tennis legend Martina Navratilova branded the decision “dreadfully unfair” to Semenya and “wrong in principle”.
The 18-time Grand Slam champion added: “She has done nothing wrong and it is awful that she will now have to take drugs to be able to compete. General rules should not be made from exceptional cases.”
