BSP-05 Landmark verdict due in Semenya’s case against IAAF

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BSP-05

ATHLETICS-GENDER-IAAF-CAS-SEMENYA-SAFRICA

Landmark verdict due in Semenya’s case against IAAF

LAUSANNE, May 1, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – The world’s sports court will decide
Wednesday on South African runner Caster Semenya’s challenge against rules
regulating testosterone in female athletes, a verdict expected to have a
profound impact on the future of women’s sport.

Semenya, a double Olympic champion, is fighting regulations imposed by the
International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) that compel
“hyperandrogenic” athletes — or those with “differences of sexual
development” (DSD) — to lower their testosterone levels if they wish to
compete as women.

The IAAF says the rules are essential to preserve a level playing field and
ensure that all female athletes can see “a path to success”.

But Semenya’s cause has earned widespread support, including from a global
coalition of nations and scientific experts who argue that testosterone is an
arbitrary and unfair measure for determining gender.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland heard a week of
arguments in the case in February.

Semenya, who has dominated over 800m in the last decade, has remained
largely silent during the legal battle.

But scores of others have vocally rallied behind her.

In a rare intrusion into the world of sport, the United Nations Human
Rights Council adopted a resolution last month branding the IAAF rules
“unnecessary, humiliating and harmful”.

With unanimous support from the council’s 47 member-states representing
every continent, the resolution marked a stunning rebuke for the IAAF.

But her most fervent support has come from her native South Africa, where
the government has accused the IAAF of seeking to violate women’s bodies.

Experts have meanwhile argued that barring certain women from competition
due to naturally high testosterone levels would be like excluding basketball
players because they are too tall.

Multiple scientists have noted that achieving excellence in sport is a
combination of training, commitment as well as genetics and that barring
people from competition over a single genetic factor has no scientific basis.

Sheree Bekker, a research fellow at the University of Bath, has argued that
the IAAF is making policy based on “binary” definitions of gender that no
longer apply.

“It is, therefore, unfair and unethical for the IAAF to make new
regulations for women’s sport – to the effect of excluding some women – based
on outdated definitions,” she wrote on The Conversation website earlier this
month.

– ‘Fair competition’ –

However, the IAAF is not alone, with athletes of the calibre of world
marathon record-holder Paula Radcliffe backing the world body.

“It’s a very, very difficult and complex situation and I don’t feel there
is an outcome that is perfectly fair to everybody,” the now-retired British
runner told AFP last month.

But she said she believed the IAAF “are trying to protect female sport and
create fair competition”.

The IAAF rules capping testosterone levels in women athletes at five
nanomoles per litre (nmol/L) of blood were instituted in November 2018 but
have been suspended pending Wednesday’s verdict.

The IAAF, led by British track champion Sebastian Coe, has maintained that
its case is simply about fairness.

DSD athletes with male levels of testosterone “get the same increases in
bone and muscle size and strength and increases in haemoglobin that a male
gets when they go through puberty,” the federation has said.

Ensuring that all women athletes have female levels of testosterone is
therefore necessary “to preserve fair competition”, it added.

Semenya’s testosterone levels are not publicly known, but if the IAAF rules
are approved she is likely not the only athlete who will be affected.

The two athletes who finished behind her in the Rio Olympics 800m, Francine
Niyonsaba of Burundi and Kenya’s Margaret Wambui, have also faced questions
about their testosterone levels.

BSS/AFP/GMR/0854 hrs