Is a medal worth a young woman’s sanity
By Mike Hurst
From: The Daily Telegraph
September 22, 2009 12:00AM
CASTER Semenya has started a bizarre daily ritual in which she relives the best and worst moment of her athletics career.
The sexually ambiguous South African teenager plays a recording of her run to victory in the women’s 800m at the world championships in Berlin, watches as she receives the gold medal.
Then she repeats the commentator’s words: “But is she a man or is she a woman? But is she a man or is she a woman?”
The confronting routine, reported by South Africa’s Weekend Argus, is believed to be part of therapy to help the 18-year-old cope with the fallout from her win.
So it has come to this.
A young person’s life is in disarray at best, danger at worst because the adults - most of them self-appointed - who presumed to guide her thought more of the glory which would be reflected on them than they did of the giant burden Semenya would be left to carry.
Athletics South Africa president Leonard Chuene and his equally ruthless retinue had devised a plan with their coaching consultant Ekkart Arbeit, the former East German doping expert and former Stasi spy, that their intersex superstar would win a gold medal in Berlin and the burden of proof that she was anything other than a “normal” female would be on the International Association of Athletics Federations.
Chuene denied Semenya was intersexual, denied gender verification tests had been conducted on her, denied (still to this day) the IAAF any access to Semenya and accused the IAAF of being “racist” and “sexist” towards her by questioning her gender.
The Daily Telegraph exposed his fraud when we revealed in a world exclusive on September 11 that Semenya was a hermaphrodite, or intersexual, with no womb or ovaries but internal testes which generated three times the testosterone of a “normal” female and are a major cancer risk.
Chuene’s bluff had been not only called, but broken down as a few honest men, such as former South African coach Wilfred Daniels, found the courage and further evidence to accuse the ASA chief of lying.
It was a charge Chuene confessed to at the weekend, although he still has yet to tell the whole truth.
Daniels told The Telegraph last night he did not know whether Semenya even now has been informed of the findings and possible health implications of the sex tests conducted on her on August 7 in Pretoria.
“Of course it’s important she knows,” Daniels said.
“That’s why it’s sad the IAAF (which has its own results of tests conducted in Berlin) can’t contact her. In the meanwhile there might be a medical condition she needs to know about.”
The IAAF results are being reviewed by a panel of experts and the executive council will make a decision about Semenya’s future in the sport at their next meeting on November 20-21.
But a sombre Daniels, the most knowledgeable person on athletics at ASA until he resigned early this month, believes she has no future in the sport.
“For all intents and purposes, no matter what the IAAF says on November 21, I don’t believe she can step on the track again as a woman,” he said yesterday.
“The other competitors in the race will withdraw.”
Daniels added: "The most amazing thing was that nobody at Athletics South Africa took the trouble to speak to Caster about this, to talk her through all the options and the consequences of competing and let her decide.
“But they needed the medal at all costs.”