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Winner of 800m gold faces weeks of investigation to settle gender controversy
Caster Semenya
Caster Semenya 'is a girl' says mother
The mother of Caster Semenya, the winner of the gold medal in the 800m in Berlin last night, has attacked claims that her daughter's victory was invalid because she is a man. "I am not even worried about that because I know who and what my child is. Mokgadi Caster is a girl and no one can change that," said Dorcus Semenya.
18-year-old Semenya's muscular physique and extraordinary performance created media speculation over whether she was really female, and her gender has been the subject of verification both in her native South Africa and since she arrived in Berlin, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) revealed yesterday. It has been suggested that she may have been born with a rare abnormality, where she has grown up with the chromosomes of a male but the genitalia of a woman.
Pierre Weiss, the IAAF general secretary, said that Semenya had been examined in a Berlin hospital since her arrival and that if she were found not to be female, the race medals would be redistributed. However, the entire investigation, involving an endocrinologist, a psychologist and a gynaecologist, could take weeks to reach a conclusion.
Speaking to South Africa's Star newspaper, her mother said: "If you go at my home village and ask any of my neighbours, they would tell you that Mokgadi is a girl. They know because they helped raise her. People can say whatever they like but the truth will remain, which is that my child is a girl. I am not concerned about such things."
Semenya's grandmother spoke about the years of taunting Caster had faced from other pupils at school and when she joined the village football team as the only girl. Maphuthi Sekgala told South Africa's Times newspaper: "If the teasing hurt her, she kept the hurt to herself and didn't show what she was feeling."
