I mean a lot to my people, I’ve done well, they’re proud of me so that was the main focus was doing it for my people and the people who support me.
Advertisement
In sixth place was Team GB’s Lynsey Sharp, who struggled to hold back the tears while discussing if the participation of runners like Semenya was unfair on her and others.
According to media reports, the International Association of Athletics Federations said that Semenya and other hyperandrogenic athletes should be barred from competing because they have an unfair advantage over others. The surgeon subsequently sold her to an animal trainer, who took her to Paris where gawkers sized up her nude form and named her the “Hottentot Venus”.
“I have tried to avoid the issue all year”, Sharp, per the Mirror, commented after her dream of winning an Olympic medal had just ended. The painted plaster cast of Baartman’s body was displayed in Paris’ Musee de l’Homme until 1974.
It was a personal best, a new South African national record and the fifth-fastest time in Olympic history. Pierre Weisse, the IAAF’s general secretary has joked “She is a woman, but maybe not 100 percent”. But her Olympic 800m triumph is certain to further inflame the scientific and ethical storm about whether she, as an intersex athlete, should be allowed to compete with women. “The first 400 we were pushing ourselves, it was great”, Semenya told reporters. “It’s not about discriminating people”. It is not about looking at how people look, how they speak, how they run, it is not about being muscular.
Do YOU want to write for GiveMeSport?
“I think when you walk out of your apartment you think about performing, you do not think about (what) your opponents look like … the advice is everybody is just to go out there and have fun”.
For the 2012 Olympics, athletes with the condition were forced to take drugs that lower testosterone levels, but those rules were thrown out for the Rio Olympics.
However, this ruling was reversed previous year when Indian sprinter Dutee Chand successfully appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which suspended the practice of testosterone regulation and challenged the IAAF to present better evidence by July 2017.
Twitter and South African media exalted in her win Sunday.
Caster Semenya has become the unwilling face of an issue plaguing the Olympics.
In 2009, Semenya was suspended for 11 months by the IAAF.
Advertisement
“Tonight is all about performance”. We’re not here to talk about the IAAF. This press conference is about the 800m that we saw here today.
