Burundi’s Francina Niyonsaba, world champion in indoor track, and Kenyan Margaret Wambui, bronze victor in 2016 and world champion under-20 two years ago, aspired to the silver medal, given the enormous superiority of the South African in the second turn.
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Burundi’s Francine Niyonsaba took silver over a second behind the dominant Semenya, with Kenya’s Margaret Wambui collecting the bronze for an all-African podium.
“It was just a fantastic race”. Obviously, there can only be one victor and it turned out good for me.
Against her wishes, the 25-year-old South African has become the face of the debate over whether women with much higher levels of testosterone than normal should be allowed to compete, unchecked, in top-level athletics.
Semenya first made headlines when she won the world championships in dominating fashion in 2009. It’s not about looking at people for how they look, how the speak, how they run.
Hours before Saturday’s final, International International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) president Sebastian Coe indicated that the world body would seek to revisit regulations regarding testosterone levels.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport a year ago ruled that there was no proof that extra testosterone was beneficial to intersex athletes and ruled that they need not take medication.
She finished behind Mariya Savinova in London, but since then the Russian has been named in a doping report and could receive a lifetime ban.
The IAAF has already signalled its intention to challenge the CAS ruling from past year that allowed Semenya and other athletes with high testosterone levels to compete in Rio without having to take suppressants. “So I think the advice from me to everybody is just to go out there and have fun”. And that was the main focus. I ran the fastest I’ve ever run in an Olympic final. People should learn how to unite. I think that’s what we need to keep doing.
“I think that tonight is all about performance”.
“The race was a little bit quick so the first 400 we were pushing ourselves which was great”, said a thrilled Semenya afterwards.
After blazing through her heat and semi-final, Semenya had the final comfortably covered.
Her win does, however, bring to 10 the number of medals bagged by the South African team at the Olympics.
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Wambui’s response was similar: “Thank you for the question”, said the Kenyan woman, “but let us focus on the performance of today, let’s not focus on the medication”. Her supporters have argued that many athletes are born with biological advantages of one kind or another, and it would be unfair to require her to undergo surgery or take chemical treatment to reduce her testosterone levels – as some athletics regulators have tried to demand.
