Olympic Champion Caster Semenya Wins Legal Battle Over Discriminatory Testing of Her Testosterone Levels

Caster Semenya, the two-time Olympic gold medalist from South Africa, has won a legal battle over a discriminatory rule that said she needed to lower her testosterone to run in competitions.

The European Court of Human Rights found that the 32-year-old middle distance runner was “a victim of discrimination on the ground of sex and also sexual characteristics,” it said in a press release Tuesday morning announcing its ruling.

The International Association of Athletics Federations had previously required Semenya to take hormone treatment to decrease her natural testosterone level in order to compete in international competitions. The organization first made Semenya take sex verification tests in 2009 when she was 18 years old. 

She was forced to take the tests after she won gold in the 800 meters at the World Championships in Berlin, beating the world record she previously set by four seconds. 

The IAAF later required Semenya to take an undisclosed medication that would lower her naturally high testosterone levels in order to compete against other female athletes, which led her to speak openly about her frustrations with her treatment by the organization.

"It made me sick, made me gain weight, panic attacks. I didn't know if I was ever going to have a heart attack," Semenya said about the medication during an interview with HBO Real Sports last year. "It's like stabbing yourself with a knife every day. But I had no choice. I'm 18, I want to run. I want to make it to [the] Olympics, that's the only option for me. But I had to make it work."

The three-time world champion said the medication “tortured me” and she later refused to take it, resulting in the IAAF banning her from 400-meter and 800-meter competitions. Semenya hasn't run an 800m race at a major event since 2019, which also prevented the track star from defending her title at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

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Semenya initially challenged the testosterone regulations in the Court of Arbitration for Sport and the Swiss Federal Tribunal but lost. She then appealed the ruling, which was overturned by the European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday.

The overturned ruling says the Swiss government needs to pay 60,000 euros — or about $66,000 — to the runner, who has now lost four years of her career. The IAAF, now known as World Athletics, said it planned to encourage Switzerland to appeal Tuesday’s ruling, according to The Associated Press.

The Paris Olympics are currently 13 months away, kicking off at the end of July 2024. Semenya last won gold in 2019 at the South African Championships in both the 5,000-meter and 1,500-meter competitions.