Caster Semenya
Double Olympic 800m champion, Caster Semenya, was discriminated against by rules forcing her to lower her testosterone levels in order to compete, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has found.
The 32-year-old South African was born with differences of sexual development (DSD) and is not allowed to compete in any track events without taking testosterone-reducing drugs.
Yesterday, the ECHR ruled in favour of Semenya in a case involving testosterone levels in female athletes.
A three-time 800m world champion and 800m and 1500m Commonwealth champion, Semenya has been in a long-running dispute with World Athletics since regulations requiring her to have hormone treatment were introduced by the governing body in 2018.
She has twice failed in legal battles to overturn the decision.
The case at the ECHR was against the government of Switzerland for not protecting Semenya’s rights and dates back to a Swiss Supreme Court ruling three years ago.
In a lengthy judgment published on Tuesday, the ECHR found the Swiss government did not protect Semenya from being discriminated against when its Supreme Court refused to overturn a decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which upheld the World Athletics rules.
An ECHR statement read, “The court found in particular that the applicant had not been afforded sufficient institutional and procedural safeguards in Switzerland to allow her to have her complaints examined effectively, especially since her complaints concerned substantiated and credible claims of discrimination as a result of her increased testosterone level caused by differences of sex development.”