Ten months after the Strasbourg Court ruled in favor, South African intersex athlete Caster Semenya returned this Wednesday to the Grand Chamber of the same court for your case review hearing.
Switzerland, supported by the international athletics federation (World Athletics), appealed the verdict handed down on July 11, 2023, which became the Grand Chamber, which will issue a decision in a few months from which there will be no further appeals.
Semenya attended the hearing, but did not speak, leaving that task to her lawyers, who highlighted the “personal and professional impact” the athlete suffered due to the ban from participating in international competitions due to her high testosterone levels.
The lawyers indicated that despite this veto, he did not give in to the imposition of “a harmful treatment.”“useless and supposedly corrective” to lower his testosterone level and be able to compete.
Semenya came to light at the 2009 World Cups in Berlin, when at the age of 18 she won gold in the 800 metershis favorite distance, raising a wave of suspicions based on his physical appearance and his male voice.
He was removed from competition for eleven months.where he underwent various medical examinations, before being cleared to race again in July 2010.
Starting in 2018, the international federation tightened the conditions of participation regarding testosterone levels, a regulation validated the following year by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), based in Switzerland.
The appeal to the Swiss justice was rejected in the name of fairness in the competition, which led Semenya to go to the European Court of Human Rights, based in Strasbourg.
This time Switzerland was condemned for washing its hands of the CAS decision and considered that the South African middle-distance runner did not have sufficient institutional and procedural guarantees to assert his arguments of discrimination, which the judges considered which is “plausible” and “well-founded. .” .
That decision called into question the doctrine of many federations regarding intersex athletes, which is based on testosterone levels to allow them to participate in women’s events.
Obligation that applies only to athletes with the XY genetic system, which corresponds to women, and not to those with XX, to men.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Jason Root, a professional writer working with Today Times Live, the premier news website. I specialize in sports writing, covering the biggest stories in the world of athletics. With an eye for detail and a passion for storytelling, I provide engaging and informative articles that capture the key elements of any event or issue. My work has been featured on numerous respected websites and publications around the world.
