Word: medal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Santhi Soundarajan has a message for Caster Semenya, the South African track star whose gender has sparked an international athletics row: "She should not abandon the fight." Soundarajan lost her 2006 Asian Games silver medal in the 800 m after failing a gender test. "I come from a small village and had no one to fight for me," Soundarajan said in an interview with TIME on Aug. 29. "I hope Semenya will come out of this better than...
...study computer technology. She was soon the college's star performer, setting an Indian record for the women's 3,000-m steeplechase. At a national meet in Bangalore in July 2005 she won the 800 m, 1,500 m and 3,000 m. She won the silver medal in the 800 m at the Asian Championships in Incheon, South Korea, in 2005, and repeated that feat a year later at the Asian Games in Doha, Qatar. (See pictures of Caster Semenya in action...
That was Soundarajan's last competition. Shortly after she was awarded the medal, she was asked to undergo a sex test, which she failed, leading Asian Games officials to strip her of her medal. Soundarajan was later diagnosed with AIS, or androgen insensitivity syndrome, a condition in which a genetic male is resistant to androgens, the male sex hormones that include testosterone, leading the body to appear externally female. "I cannot comment on the gender test as I am not a doctor, but the incident surely robbed India of a world-class athlete," says P. Nagarajan, her coach, who recruited...
Despite rumors of an attempted suicide (which Soundarajan has denied) and frustration over her interrupted athletic career, Soundarajan has found a new calling in coaching, sounding content in a recent interview. She was attending a track meet in Pudukkottai, where she returned after losing her medal. "It was difficult but now finally I feel O.K.," she says with a laugh. The state government of Tamil Nadu awarded her a television set and a cash prize as a show of support after Doha. Soundarajan took that money - a little more than $30,000 - and in 2007 started a sports academy...
When the Queen made Hanif Kureishi a Commander of the British Empire in 2008, she gave him a medal embossed with the logo: "For God and Empire." "You can't get better than that," the writer quipped at the time. "The only causes are the lost causes - or the nonexistent ones...