Let Caster be – she’s no lab rat

A statement issued by a firm of attorneys, the one announcing that Caster Semenya would challenge the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) on the gender issue, was unusually poignant.

Norton Rose Fulbright said a legal challenge had been filed on behalf of Semenya with the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Then it cut to the emotional heart of the matter: Semenya, it said, was “entitled to compete the way she was born without being obliged to alter her body by any chemical means”.

In all the dust and fury of debate the past few years about the middle-distance athlete, many of her critics have been bitingly unfair, implying that she was, in some way, guilty of abusing the system.

She has not, like many other athletes in many other sports, taken performance-enhancing substances, yet the IAAF wants to chemically treat her – like a lab rat – to reduce the supposed edge she has over other women.

If that is not interfering with nature, we don’t know what is.

Semenya herself summed it up: “It is not fair that people question who I am. I am Mokgadi Caster Semenya.

“I am a woman and I am fast.”

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