Shame on the IAAF. Their new rules seem a thinly disguised attempt and, some would say institutionalised discrimination, to get rid of Caster Semenya – the world, Olympic and Commonwealth Games 800m track champion whose only crime has been to pose an awkward gender problem.
Only it really wasn't thatawkward. Just inconvenient. Semenya, last seen easily winning 800m and 1500m gold medals at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, is the masculine-looking woman whose appearance sparked years of controversy after she burst onto the world scene in 2009, winning the 800m world championship.
In the almost-decade since then, there have been insults, upsets, invasive sex tests that left Semenya feeling victimised and a troubled peace as she set about winning three world titles and Olympic gold medals in London and Rio.
No longer, it seems. The IAAF have changed their regulations affecting female athletes with naturally high testosterone levels – insisting they take medication to lower their levels to compete against other women. Respected sports scientist Ross Tucker has estimated the "treatment" to reduce her testosterone will knock 7s off Semenya's times – making her uncompetitive on the world stage.
Her testosterone occurs naturally. Just like Steven Adams' height made him a world-class basketballer or Ian Thorpe's size 17 feet helped him become a world-beating swimmer. Just like Kenyan or Ethiopian athletes born at altitude have an advantage – as does Usain Bolt, whose naturally ultra-long legs made him an almost invincible sprinter once he wound them up.
Caster Semenya of South Africa competes in the Women's 800m final during day ten of the 16th IAAF World Athletics Championships London 2017. Photo / Getty Images
What about the freakishly long arms possessed by heavyweight boxing champions Lennox Lewis and Anthony Joshua? Both have a reach of about 2.1m – almost seven feet in the old measure and seen to great effect when Joshua beat our own Joseph Parker recently. Should we insist Joshua has surgery to shorten his arms to make it easier for the competition?
Other track athletes have higher-than-normal natural levels of EPO – the hormone which increases oxygen-carrying red blood cells and which is taken by drug cheats.
These are all accidents of nature; advantages of birth, genetics and environment.
Yet the IAAF, in 2011, came up with a ruling that women could not compete unless their testosterone was below a certain level. That was blown out of the water in 2014 by Indian sprinter Dutee Chand who successfully petitioned the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) that she should be allowed to compete with higher testosterone levels as it had not been conclusively scientifically proven that testosterone created a significant performance advantage.
Now the IAAF have cut the permitted testosterone level in half after a study, printed in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found high-testosterone women had a significant advantage in five events: the 400m (2.73 per cent advantage), the 400m hurdles (2.78 per cent), the 800m (1.78 per cent), the hammer throw (4.53 per cent) and the pole vault (2.94 per cent).
Yet, oddly, the hammer throw and the pole vault – where most advantage is supposedly gained – are exempt from the IAAF's new regulations. Huh.
Caster Semenya has been the centre of controversy for years. Photo / Getty Images
The IAAF had to get round the Chand issue – so her 100m and 200m events are untouched by the new rules. All events from 400m to 1500m (the 800m and 1500m are Semenya's speciality) are instead governed by the new testosterone regulations.
You see where this is going? Cheerio, Caster. Semenya later.
It's difficult to think of another occasion when a sports body seems to have engineered a situation to rid itself of an athlete.
It might be more understandable if Semenya was some kind of unbeatable freak who had shattered world records all over the place. But six women have run the 800m faster than 27-year-old Semenya. Her personal best is almost two seconds slower than Jarmila Kratochvilova's 800m world record set in 1983. Semenya was also beaten into second place in the 2012 London Olympics 800m by a Russian later found to be doping and stripped of her gold medal.
And there you have the IAAF's folly – Semenya, a poor black, gay athlete (her partner is a woman) with some male characteristics is not okay, even though her advantage is naturally obtained and she has shown impoverished blacks in South Africa there can be a pathway to glory.
But long-held world records, suspected (but never proven) of being drug-aided? They're okay.
Krachtovilova's is the longest standing world record in athletics; she denied taking PEDs and never failed a drugs test though one athlete in the 1990s said of her mark: "It is impossible for women to run so fast...it will last for 100 years".
In the same ilk are the longstanding and, frankly, scarcely believable 30-year-old records in the 100m and 200m of Florence Griffith Joyner and the similarly credulity-stretching record of East Germany's Marita Koch in the 400m (set in 1985).
The IAAF have plenty of other issues to pursue – drug cheats, you think? – rather than what seems to be a cold, calculated effort to end a natural athlete's time before it is due.
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