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Two-time Olympic champion, three-time world champion, five-time African champion. Runner Caster Semenya (32) has been the benchmark in the middle distance over the past decade. But then she was thwarted. Because her body is too masculine. Because Semenya is intersex. Their sex characteristics cannot be clearly biologically classified as female or male.
The international athletics association IAAF has withdrawn her right to participate because her testosterone level was too high. An odyssey began for Semenya. She went from court to court to fight the IAAF’s testosterone rule. Now she talks about how much this battle took a toll on her.
«The world association stole my best years from me. “It was a robbery in broad daylight,” the South African told the German “Sportschau”. She is not just talking about her sports career. To reduce her naturally high testosterone level to the permitted level, Semenya took hormones that seriously affected her. ‘It was hell. The hormones change your feelings and your body, you feel weak and sick every day.” The track and field athlete talks about panic attacks, weight gain and night sweats.
The two-time Olympic champion describes the medication as poison. But it was the only way for her to compete. ‘I was hopeless and desperate. That’s not the life you want to have.” It wasn’t until the IAAF’s testosterone rule was successfully suspended in 2015 that Semenya felt alive again, “liberated from oppression,” as she says.
And although the three-time world champion has said goodbye to athletics, her battle for recognition is not yet over. Their lawsuit against the world association and the testosterone rule is still pending at the European Court of Human Rights. Caster Semenya is convinced he is right: “If I were a man, I would have started with the men. But I know my identity. I am a woman. I can be excluded from participating in competitions, but not from life as an individual.”
Source : Blick
I’m Emma Jack, a news website author at 24 News Reporters. I have been in the industry for over five years and it has been an incredible journey so far. I specialize in sports reporting and am highly knowledgeable about the latest trends and developments in this field.
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