[imagesource: Phill Magakoe / AFP via Getty Images]
Double Olympic champion Caster Semenya has had a torrid few years.
Her struggle to compete at the highest level actually dates much further back than that, though, which she made clear during a recent interview with HBO Real Sports.
Semenya didn’t hold back at all in a clip shared yesterday. The full interview will air later today in the US.
The 2012 and 2016 Olympic 800-metre women’s champion said that her run-ins with race officials started 2009 when she was just 18.
Here’s The Telegraph:
…Semenya has accused athletics chiefs who “thought I had a dick” of forcing her to take medication that “tortured” her and made her so sick she feared she would have a heart attack…
“They thought I had a dick, probably,” she said. “I told them: ‘It’s fine. I’m a female, I don’t care. If you want to see I’m a woman, I will show you my vagina. All right?’”
Semenya took the medication needed to lower her natural testosterone levels in order to compete in women’s races for several years and likened it to “stabbing yourself with a knife every day”:
Caster Semenya on @RealSportsHBO this week. On when she took testosterone-suppressing medication for eligibility: “I didn’t know if I was having a heart attack. It’s like stabbing yourself with a knife every day, but I had no choice.” pic.twitter.com/QzGMieyCqD
— Nick Zaccardi (@nzaccardi) May 23, 2022
After an unsuccessful appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), as well as Switzerland’s Federal Supreme Court, Semenya was unable to defend her Olympic titles in Tokyo.
While she waits for a hearing at the European Court of Human Rights, Semenya has turned her attention to longer distances in which she is eligible to compete.
In March, she pointed out the oddity of such a ruling:
So according to World Athletics and it’s members I’m a male when it comes to 400m,800m, 1500m and 1600m! Then a female in 100m,200m, and long distance events.
what a research. What kind of a fool would do that? Hai mathata man, bare sepela o di bone.
— Caster Semenya (@caster800m) March 26, 2022
According to The Washington Post, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) has never released details of the specific medication Semenya was required to take in order to lower her naturally high testosterone.
