Cape Town – Two-time Olympic champion sprinter Caster Semenya on Sunday expressed her disappointment in International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry over the decision to ban transgender athletes from competing in the Games.
Semenya, who is South African, said she expected more from a female leader like Coventry, who is from Zimbabwe and a fellow African.
“Personally, as a leader, she’s an African, I’m sure she understands how we are Africans, we’re coming from a global south, you know, you can’t control genetics,” Semenya said at a press conference in Cape Town after promoting the Women’s Race to celebrate female power, unity and community support. “For me personally, being a woman coming from Africa, you know how, you know, African women or women in the global south are affected by this.”
Semenya spoke three days after IOC Transgender female athletes excluded Competing in women’s events at the Olympics or any IOC event. The decision, published in a 10-page policy document on Thursday, also bans female athletes like Semenya with medical conditions known as difference in sex development, or DSD.
Semenya said, “Obviously if you say science, because we talk about science here, if the science is clear, then show us who made the decision and don’t dress it up as a lie because it is a lie and we know because we’ve seen it, so if we have to respond or confront Kirsty, that’s how we will respond, and we will respond as strong as we are because it affects women.”
Semenya, who was assigned female at birth in South Africa and has testosterone levels higher than the normal female range, is a two-time Olympic gold medalist in the 800 metres, who has been banned from running in her favorite races at major international competitions such as the Olympics and World Championships since 2019 after she refused to take medication to artificially lower her hormone levels.
“For me personally, I would say the voice has not been heard because you are taking it as a tick box, you are ticking a box so you can give clarification or say yes, we have consulted,” she said. “For me, you’re ticking the box.”
Other track athletes such as Semenya and India’s Dutee Chand challenged previous versions of their sport’s eligibility rules in court.
Before the 2024 Paris Olympics, three top-tier sports – track and field, swimming and cycling – did not include transgender women who had gone through male puberty. Semenya won a European Court of Human Rights ruling in her years-long legal challenge to overturn track and field rules.
However, last year, she claimed to have ended her seven-year legal challenge against the gender eligibility rules despite a legal victory.
The IOC said Thursday that the eligibility policy, which will come into effect from the Los Angeles Olympics in July 2028, “protects fairness, security and integrity in the women’s category.”
It is unclear how many, if any, transgender women are competing at the Olympic level. No woman born male competed at the 2024 Paris Summer Games, although weightlifter Laurel Hubbard competed at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 without winning a medal.
The IOC said last week’s decision was not retroactive and did not apply to any grassroots or recreational sports programs. The IOC’s Olympic Charter states that access to sport is a human right.
