Word: semenya
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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...
...Like Semenya, Soundarajan, 28, comes from extremely modest beginnings. Born in the village of Kathakkurichi to brick-kiln workers in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, she was a versatile athlete in school, competing in field hockey, middle-distance running and javelin. In 2004, an engineering college in Chennai, the state's biggest city, recruited Soundarajan with a scholarship to 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...
...late for Semenya. "She should not let them take away her medal," Soundarajan says, or allow one test to determine her fate. "She is a woman and that's it, full stop," Soundarajan says. "A gender test cannot take away from...
...Test results for Semenya are not expected for several weeks. A diagnosis of AIS can be extremely difficult for a young person, says Ritchie, who adds that it is a "complete mess" that the IAAF leaked reports of Semenya's gender test to the media before the results are known. On Sunday, IAAF president Lamine Diack admitted that the affair could have been treated with more sensitivity. "It should not even have become an issue if the confidentiality had been respected," he said. "There was a leak of confidentiality at some point, and this lead to some insensitive reactions." Semenya...
...Even if the IAAF rules Semenya ineligible to compete, Ritchie says, that does not mean she is a cheat. It is quite common for neither an individual with AIS nor her parents to realize that she is genetically male. Indeed, AIS is sometimes diagnosed at fertility clinics only when women seek help because of their inability to become pregnant. "If this girl turns out to have AIS, it's not her fault," he says. "As those with AIS often are, she was brought up as a girl by her parents, which was the right thing to do." (See TIME...