Asked to explain what she meant by that, her reply clearly referred to her own experiences of ridicule and criticism, which started the moment she first burst on to the worldwide scene in 2009, winning the world championships as a junior athlete. The court ruled that there was insufficient evidence that the performance advantage caused by hyperandrogenism was so substantial that it warranted excluding women with elevated testosterone from competing unless they take medication or undergo treatment to change their bodies.
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Van Niekerk, who claimed South Africa’s first gold medal in Rio by breaking Michael Johnson’s 400m world record with a sensational new mark of 43.03, has already left Brazil and gone back to his training base in Gemona, Italy.
In Rio, France’s Justine Fedronic, who failed to qualify for the 800 final, said she had sympathy for Semenya’s situation but did not consider competing against her a fair fight. “Unfortunately it’s only eight people who make it through to the final so yes, it was just a fantastic race”, she added. “I think this press conference is all about the 800m we ran today, so thank you”. I was doing it for my people, the people who support me. The main focus here was just to run a championship. 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 more muscular, it’s all about sport’. I think about performing. It’s about sport. When you leave your apartment, you don’t want to look at what you look like. “The advice would be for everybody to go out and have fun”.
Her time was two seconds adrift of the world record of 1:53:28, set by Jarmila Kratochvilova, running for Czechoslovakia, in July 1983.
“Government is also proud of all our participants for giving their best at the Rio Games. I have a very quick last 200, I just have to utilise it”. After a victory in the 2009 World Championships, Semenya was subjected to a gender test.
The post Semenya runs like a man, 800m women lament appeared first on Vanguard News.
Sharp had hoped to be challenging for a medal but was happy with her performances, especially after failing to make the final at the World Championships a year ago. And it just may be that she never gets to run so fast again. I know I can go faster but I’m still happy with that performance. I would have been disappointed with anything other than a medal last night, something which is always going to be hard in such a strong field.
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In an interview moments after the race, the Brit said: “I have tried to avoid the issue all year”.
