Word: semenya
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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IAAF director of communications Nick Davies stressed that the organization does not believe Semenya has been masquerading as a woman to give herself an unfair advantage. "It's a medical issue. It's not an issue of cheating," he told reporters before the final. Davies also said that the IAAF was trying to handle this sensitive situation as delicately as possible. "She is a human being who was born as a woman and who has grown up all her life as a woman, but who is now in a position where this is being questioned." Because there...
Speaking from the rural village of Seshego in South Africa's northeastern Limpopo province, Semenya's mother Dorcus told the country's Star newspaper that she felt jealousy had motivated the rumors about her daughter. "If you go [to] my home village and ask any of my neighbors, they would tell you that Mokgadi [Caster] is a girl," she said. "They know because they helped raise...
...Semenya's coach, Michael Seme, also dismissed the claims. "I can give you the telephone numbers of her roommates in Berlin," he told South African news site News24. "They have already seen her naked in the showers and she has nothing to hide...
Seme's suggested test may seem crude, but there's a precedent for it in the world of athletics. At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, in the very same stadium where Semenya won her world title, rumors swirled that 100-meter runners Stella Walsh (nicknamed "Stella the Fella") and her rival Helen Stephens were men. After Stephens took the gold metal, the Olympics committee performed a manual check on her external genitals - and concluded that she was, in fact, a woman. And prior to the 1966 European athletics championships, female competitors were made to walk in so-called nude parades...
...those characteristics that Semenya's competitors see in the world champ, leading them to predict - and hope - that her forthcoming gender results will leave her ineligible to compete with women. "Just look at her," barked Mariya Savinova, the fifth-place finisher from Russia, following Wednesday's race. Italian Elisa Piccione, who finished sixth, was equally severe: "These kinds of people should not run with us. For me, she's not a woman. She's a man." She also outran them both - and not even a gender test can change that...