Is fair play in running more important than fairness to Caster Semenya as a human? | Gaby Hinsliff

All her life, the South African athlete has been portrayed as a freak. Her case is as much about ethics as about sport or science

When she was a girl, growing up in rural South Africa, the runner Caster Semenya would sometimes face a humiliating ritual before a race. She grew accustomed, her coaches once said, to having to retreat to the bathroom with a member of a suspicious rival athletics team and physically show them that she was not a boy. From her childhood, people had gossiped about her body; by the time she had begun competing internationally she must have been used to the whispers, the open stares in changing rooms.

Related: Caster Semenya loses landmark legal case against IAAF over testosterone levels

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