CAPE TOWN (AP) — Two-time Olympic champion runner Caster Semenya expressed her disappointment Sunday with IOC President Kirsty Coventry over the decision to ban transgender female athletes of participation in women’s events at the Olympic Games.
Semenya, a South African, said she expected more from a female leader like Coventry, who is from Zimbabwe and a fellow countrywoman.
“Personally, for her as a leader, she is an African. I’m sure she understands how, you know, we as Africans, we come from a global South, you know, you can’t control genetics,” Semenya said at a news conference after a women’s race promoted to celebrate female strength, unity and community support in Cape Town. “For me personally, because she’s a woman coming from Africa, knowing how, you know, African women or women in the global South are affected by that.”
Semenya was speaking three days after the International Olympic Committee banned transgender female athletes from competing in women’s events at the Olympics or any IOC event. The decision published in a Policy document of 10 pages Thursday also restricts female athletes like Semenya with medical conditions known as differences in sex development, or DSD.
“It is clear that if you say the science, because we are talking about science here, if the science is clear, show us who decided that and don’t dress it up as a lie because it is a lie and we know it because we have seen it, so if we were to answer or confront Kirsty, that is how we will react and we will react strongly as we are because it affects women,” Semenya said.
Semenya, who was assigned female at birth in South Africa and has testosterone levels higher than the typical female range, is a two-time Olympic gold medalist in the 800 meters who has been banned from running in her favorite race at major international competitions such as the Olympics and world championships since 2019 because she refused to follow the rules and take drugs to artificially lower her hormone levels.
“For me personally, I say the voice isn’t being heard because you’re treating it as a tick box, ticking a box so you can clarify or say, yes, we’ve consulted,” she said. “For me, it’s you who checks the box.”
Ashley Landis/Associated Press
Semenya and other track and field athletes, such as Dutee Chand of India, have challenged previous versions of their sport’s eligibility rules in court.
Before the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, there were three top sports: athleticsswimming and cycling – excluded transgender women who had gone through male puberty. Semenya won a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights in her years-long legal challenge to enforce the rules that did not overturn them.
However, last year she claimed to have ended her seven-year legal battle against sexual suitability rules despite that legal victory.
The participation policy that will apply from the Los Angeles Olympics in July 2028 “protects fairness, safety and integrity in the female category,” the IOC said on Thursday.
It is unclear how many transgender women compete at the Olympic level. However, no woman who transitioned from being born male competed in the 2024 Summer Games in Paris weightlifter Laurel Hubbard performed at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics without winning a medal.
The IOC said last week’s decision was not retroactive and did not apply to grassroots or recreational sports programs. That of the IOC Olympic Charter states that access to sport is a human right.
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