Caster Semenya and the women's 800m

Gender and intersex issues are likely to be in the volatile Rio mix, should the Olympic Games proceed as planned this summer. These issues will make an interesting addition to worries about venue readiness, the threat of violence both social and terroristic, and the Zika virus. One certain gender controversy will revolve around 800m runner Caster Semenya. The word 'intersex' is now often mentioned somewhere near Semenya's name. When she first emerged as a star athlete about six or seven years ago, Western countries and athletics associations were censured for questioning the sex of this barrel-chested woman who looks like a man, and for being so crude as to require her to submit to gender testing. This year, it seems that her defence will be couched in terms of gender identity/fluidity, and woe betide anyone who questions that. South African Semenya is also a woman of the moment in that she has 'married' - and paid the bride-price for - her long-term female sexual partner. Though the gender testing from a years ago revealed an unusually high testosterone level, Semenya has now been exempted from having to take testosterone reducing drugs. The result is that whereas during her time of hormone dampening her performances slowed accordingly, she is now surging ahead in Diamond League meetings as an unbeatable force. She makes the top athletes she is competing against look as weak as kittens. The official line is that only Caster herself is worthy of sympathy. But what about every single one of those other athletes, the ones with normal, female testosterone levels, whose effforts and sacrifices are now all pointless? Semenya's times so far - let's say 1:55 - are admittedly not in the league of David Rudisha's 1:40, but she has achieved them apparently effortlessly, barely breaking a sweat and not breathing hard, while the elite athletes coming in behind her are collapsing with fatigue. She has been coached by former 800m star Maria Mutola (from Mozambique), who faced similar controversy about her masculine looks when she was dominant. No question, Mutola was very 'butch', but in my opinion she was more obviously female than Semenya. And she was not unbeatable. (The same could be said about former javelin thrower Fatima Whitbread, and no doubt lots of others too.) The problem is ultimately not one of looks (variable, unreliable) but of testosterone levels. The problem has no counterpoint, for a male athlete with unusally low testosterone levels would be a non-starter. Or a woman who identified as male. That person would simply would not be an athlete of anywhere near the caliber needed to compete against men at the highest level. None of this is Semenya's fault, as far as we know. If, as Semenya has apparently said, 'God made her that way' and that's all right with her, then good for her as an individual. But does it necessarily follow that she gets to overturn the lives of others athletes en masse? In the interest of not just this year's 800m runners but potentially of female athletes in all disciplines, a testosterone threshold for women athletes should be arrived at, one that doesn't make normal-level athletes look like under-achievers. Arrived at with the athletes themselves, agreed on, and then maintained.