Word: semenya
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...Caster Semenya was greeted by a rapturous crowd on Tuesday when she returned to her native South Africa after claiming the women's 800-m gold medal at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin. But speculation surrounding the legitimacy of her title continues to rumble on after a British newspaper revealed that doping officials had found the 18-year-old athlete's testosterone levels to be three times as high as those normally expected in a female...
...Tuesday, The Daily Telegraph reported that the hormone tests had been carried out in South Africa before the World Championships and that the results had contributed to the decision by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) to request a detailed gender-verification test of the athlete. Semenya came to the world's attention after winning the African Junior Championships in Mauritius and then the World Championships by a massive 2-sec. margin. (Read "Between the Sexes...
...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...