Despite Semenya facing those restrictions, she still won silver in 2011 and 2012 at the London Olympics.
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Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Aug 21 (efe_epa).
The 25-year-old on Saturday clocked one minute and 55.28 seconds to beat Burundi’s Francine Niyonsaba by 1.21 seconds, Xinhua news agency reported. The Indian runner Chand opens up about her hyperandrogenism the only current athlete to do so and challenges the IAAF on rules that limit women’s naturally-occurring testosterone.
Radcliffe said Semenya was “not cheating” but something needed to be done to ensure she did not benefit from her elevated testosterone levels. They certainly didn’t look much like women and their strength was far beyond any other female athlete in the world at the time. It’s not about being muscular. Heading into the final turn, she had a couple of meters on Semenya but coming off the turn, Semenya led by a few meters and she’d power home for a convincing near-10-meter victory after a 14.0 final 100 (28.3 final 200). “The main focus here was just to run a championship”, Semenya told reporters.
July, 2010: In a brief, three-sentence statement, the IAAF announces that Semenya is cleared to compete again against other women, almost a year after her gold at the worlds.
She was also asked what the sweep of medals would mean to African women as a whole – or indeed the rest of the world looking on: “We all know that we Africans just win medals in middle and long distance, and walking in their footsteps makes me feel proud, you know”.
“We realised the time difference was not going to favour us so we just had to be clever and focus on the 800”, she said.
Questions were raised about Semenya’s gender before and during her run to the world title in 2009.
The rule was appealed past year by sprinter Dutee Chand of India, who ran here in the preliminary heats of the 100 meters and the 400 relay and finished close to last in both.
March, 2010: Suspended apparently because of her high testosterone levels and frustrated with being forced to sit on the sidelines, Semenya turns up at a track meet in Stellenbosch, South Africa and demands to be allowed to run.
Semenya did end up being the Olympic favorite and now the Olympic champion and the silver and bronze went to two women whom many also believe to be hyperandrogenous.
Since then Semenya has been head and shoulders above her rivals and is nearly a full second quicker than anyone else this season. It’s the fastest anywhere in the world for eight years.
“The field was very good and I’d just like to congratulate everybody who has been in this competition, even those who were in the semis our out in the first round”.
Indeed the issue was put to all three women, and whether they have been subjected to any testing of testosterone levels, or if they had been enforced to take medication to reduce it in the past, and if so how they felt about it. She draws attention to the embraces she shared with Canada’s Melissa Bishop and Poland’s Joanna Jozwik at the finish as demonstrations of solidarity.
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Just two hours before her race, IAAF president Sebastian Coe said again that track and field’s world body will soon go back to the CAS to try and overturn that decision. “It was to be expected that everybody would be there”.
