South African runner Caster Semenya wins appeal over testosterone rules

July 11 (UPI) -- The European Court of Human Rights ruled Tuesday that South African Olympic running champion Caster Semenya was discriminated against when World Athletics created rules that forced her to lower her naturally high testosterone levels to compete.

The court ruled 4-3 in favor of Semenya, finding that previous courts deprived Semenya of fighting her ruling in other courts.

"The court found that the applicant had not been afforded sufficient institutional and procedural safeguards in Switzerland to allow her to have her complaints examined effectively and that the domestic remedies available to the applicant could not be considered effective in the circumstances of the present case," the human rights court ruled Tuesday.

It said past cases "had left open serious questions" over the validity of the testosterone regulations, the effects of "side-effects from the hormone treatment; the potential inability of athletes to remain in compliance ... and the lack of evidence of 46 XY DSD athletes having an actual significant athletic advantage in the 1,500- and 1-mile races."

Semenya, the gold medal-winning middle-distance runner, is hyperandrogenous, which means she has naturally high levels of testosterone. She had handily won the 800-meter gold medals in the 2012 and 2016 Olympics when new rules targeting female athletes ordered they could compete at lower testosterone levels.

Opponents of the new rules argued that the new measures unfairly targeted Semenya and a small handful of athletes with similar testosterone levels. She lost an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in April 2019 and Switzerland's Federal Supreme Court in 2020.

World Athletics said the human rights court decision does not affect its stance or rules that since the appeal was filed against the CAS and the Swiss government and they will encourage them to appeal the decision.

"We remain of the view that the DSD [differences in sex development] regulations are a necessary, reasonable and proportionate means of protecting fair competition in the female category as the Court of Arbitration for Sport and Swiss Federal Tribunal both found, after a detailed and expert assessment of the evidence," World Athletics said.