Caster Semenya — a two-time Olympic champion — is speaking out against International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry after the organization banned transgender athletes from competition.
Semenya, who is South African, shared her disappointment in Coventry (a fellow African woman) in a press conference on Sunday, March 29, after a women’s race in Cape Town.
“Personally, for her as a leader, she’s an African, I’m sure she understands how, you know, we as Africans, we are coming from, as a global South, you know, you cannot control genetics,” Semenya said. “For me personally, for her being a woman coming from Africa, knowing how, you know, African women or women in the global South are affected by that.”
The IOC’s decision, announced on Thursday, March 26, bans transgender women athletes from competing in women’s events at the Olympics or any IOC competition. The new policy also bans female athletes with medical conditions known as difference in sex development, or DSD.
Semenya — born a female — has a DSD condition herself.
“Obviously if you say the science, because we talk about science here, if the science is clear, show us who decided and don’t dress that as a lie because it’s a lie and we know because we’ve seen it, so if we were to answer or confront Kirsty, that’s how we going to respond, and we’ll respond strong as we are because it affects women,” Semenya said.
Semenya has naturally high testosterone levels — higher than the typical female. She has won two Olympic gold medals in the 800-meter race (London 2012 and Rio de Janeiro 2016) but has been banned from major international competition since 2019 because she refused to reduce her hormone levels.
“For me personally, I’ll say the voice is not heard because you taking it as a tick box, you ticking a box so you can go clarify or say yes we’ve consulted,” she said. “For me, it’s you ticking the box.”
The IOC’s new policy will be in effect for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Since the 2024 Paris Olympics, three major events (track and field, swimming and cycling) have banned transgender women who have been through male puberty.
Only one openly transgender woman has competed in the Olympics to date (New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics) and she did not make it past the opening round of competition.
The IOC says its new policy, “protects fairness, safety and integrity in the female category.”
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