Cape Town – The government on Sunday congratulated Caster Semenya for breezing through the women’s 800m final and securing an Olympic gold medal.
Advertisement
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.
Caster Semenya won the Olympic title in the 800 meters Saturday with no one close to challenging her, a result that will only stoke the complex debate over whether women with much higher levels of testosterone than normal should be allowed to compete unchecked.
Following the controversy, she did an interview with YOU magazine and said: “God made me the way I am and I accept myself”.
Attention then turned to the men’s 5 000m. The medals [are] gold medal‚ silver or bronze‚ so those are targets.
Since the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled a year ago there was no conclusive scientific proof that elevated testosterone provides women with a significant competitive edge, the South African has been allowed to compete without the medication that suppressed her naturally occurring elevated testosterone levels to that considered normal for female athletes.
She has since been diagnosed with hyperandrogenism, which means her testosterone levels are far in excess of the vast majority of women. So I think the advice is to be for everybody just to go out there and have fun.
The last time a South African team claimed 10 medals, but with more than two gold medals among them, was in Amsterdam in 1920, reports Reuters.
Semenya was happy to thank her fans but dismissed her critics.
Sao Paulo – In the build-up to the Rio Olympics, Caster Semenya said she would run both the 400m and the 800m in Rio.
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.
“You can see how emotional it all was”, she reportedly told BBC. It’s not about discriminating people.
Sobbing during the interview, she continued: “The public can see how hard it is with the change of rule but all we can do is give it our best”. Semenya’s winning time of 1 minute, 55.28 seconds was one of the top 20 times ever in the two-lap race.
But under a legal challenge, the IAAF was forced to drop the testosterone-limiting rules past year. They were expecting more out of me. She is someone who I talk to regularly on the circuit.
Advertisement
She can now compete without the medication but some of her rivals, notably Britain’s Lynsey Sharp, believe it is “difficult” to race against her.
