“I make 800 meters. 800 meters does not make me. You must go back to the statistics. You will understand. If you look at my stats, you’ll understand what I mean. So for me, I have no unfinished business in the 800 meters because I have done what I was supposed to do.”
Caster Semenya is a two-time Olympic champion and three-time world champion in the 800 meters. She just released her book, The Race To Be Myself, where she opened up for the first time about the personal and professional effects of taking hormone-suppressing medication for six years following her win at the 2009 World Championships at 18 years old.
Semenya is considered a female athlete with differences in sexual development (DSD) due to her hyperandrogenism, which leads to higher-than-usual levels of natural testosterone in her body. For the past few years, World Athletics has required DSD athletes to medically reduce their testosterone levels in order to compete in events from 400 meters to the mile. As a result, Semenya has not raced her signature event since 2019.
Instead, a lot of her time in the past few years has been focused in the courtroom as she’s taken on several legal battles against World Athletics to have the regulations overturned. Europe’s top human rights court ruled in Semenya’s favor that her appeal to a Swiss Federal Tribunal following the dismissal of her case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport was not properly heard. She’s awaiting a verdict from the European Court of Human Rights. World Athletics issued a statement to Reuters this week saying that the governing body has only ever been interested in protecting the female category.
The book includes a gripping account of how she went to a hospital in South Africa expecting to undergo an anti-doping test only to realize later she was undergoing a gender verification test. Another test followed in Berlin before the World Championship final and then a media storm blew up when she learned about her condition along with the rest of the world when the results of the test were leaked.
The book also includes some interesting and insightful recaps of her races at the London Olympics and the world championships that followed.
I fully understand this is a hotly debated topic within the sport. This isn’t going to be a debate but rather hearing more of Caster’s story now that she’s finally opened up about it and why her focus now shifts to fighting for others.
Host: Chris Chavez | @chris_j_chavez on Instagram
Guest: Caster Semenya | @castersemenya800m on Instagram
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