Caster Semenya returns to world athletics championships, but not in her pet event due to rules around testosterone levels – صحيفة الصوت

For the first time in a long time, champion runner Caster Semenya heads into the athletics world championships with virtually no chance to win.

On Thursday morning (AEST), the 31-year-old three-time world champion at 800 metres will run instead in the 5,000m race.

She is not considered a serious medal contender and it is the first time since she started dominating her favourite distance, well over a decade ago, that anybody has said that.

The South African chose to run in a race she does not prefer because she declined to submit to rules in track and field that demand she take hormone-reducing treatments if she wants to enter the 800m.

They are rules that Semenya, in a statement through her lawyer, called “an affront to the spirit of the sport”.

Semenya was assigned female at birth, was raised as a girl and identifies as a woman.

She has an intersex condition called 46,XY differences in sex development that causes male and female traits and a testosterone level higher than the typical female range. She was banned from her best event after losing her appeal of a World Athletics regulation that made women with her condition ineligible for some races.

She is not transgender but her case, and those involving others who have similar intersex conditions, carry strong implications for how transgender athletes are treated and classified.