25 year-old Semeyna, who has previously been subjected to gender tests to investigate if she should be competing in the women’s event, set a national record in claiming her gold medal.
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Semenya doesn’t have the anti-apartheid leader’s oratory gifts. Even the nation’s editorial cartoonists have been lauding her, with one cartoonist publishing an image of Ms. Semenya running triumphantly past her critics.
Semenya has been under scrutiny from officials, the media and other athletes because she has higher levels of testosterone than her competitors.
But, of course, it is complex.
Semenya exploded onto the global athletics scene in 2009, winning gold at the World Championships in Berlin as an 18-year-old prodigy.
Caster Semenya competes in the Women’s 800m Final at the Rio Olympic Games on 20 August, 2016. “Obviously we know we’re quicker the last 200”. Look it up, if you must.
It threatened to be a cross-examination, but one reporter ambitiously compared her to Nelson Mandela, prompting several American journalists to burst into laughter. Her dignity, like his, is both her shield and her weapon. To my fellow South Africans. Like Mandela, she has had to learn how to tune hatred out. “We’re not here to talk about IAAF, we’re not here to talk about some speculations”. It’s not about looking at people, you know, how they look, how they speak, how they run. It’s not about being muscular.
Perhaps the best bit about her Olympic gold was how it seemed, nearly immediately, to bring her out of her shell.
But she isn’t running any more.
Semenya never looked in trouble in Saturday’s final, biding her time after a 57.59sec opening lap.
Partially in response to those rumblings, world athletics chiefs implemented restrictions on testosterone levels in 2011.
“I think I make a difference”.
“I was coming down the home straight, we were not far away and you can see how close it is”. “Maybe, if people they just unite, it can be a great world”. They were expecting more out of me. Some of them aren’t happy. She also produced her trademark celebration: She pulled her arms up and flexed her bicep muscles, then brushed her hands across her shoulders – the way she brushed off her rivals.
Kenya’s Margaret Wambui was ranging up on Semenya’s outside, but after keeping her at bay, Semenya charged forward at the final bend and streaked away from Niyonsaba to win in a new South African record of 1 minute 55.28 seconds (1:55.28), which is also the fastest time in the world this year and two seconds off the world record of 1:53.28, set by Jarmila Kratochvilova from the Czech Republic in 1983.
But this night, Semenya’s night, was neither the time nor place for rivals to get into the debate about the need or otherwise for testosterone-limiting rules. It suspended the rules previous year, judging that they were based on uncertain science.
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Many others, including International Association of Athletics Federation president Sebastian Coe, insist she should only compete if she takes hormone-suppressing drugs.
