{"id":11670,"date":"2012-06-20T23:36:19","date_gmt":"2012-06-20T21:36:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/06\/olympics-semenya-seeks-to-shrug-off-suspicion\/"},"modified":"2012-06-20T23:36:19","modified_gmt":"2012-06-20T21:36:19","slug":"olympics-semenya-seeks-to-shrug-off-suspicion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/olympics-semenya-seeks-to-shrug-off-suspicion\/","title":{"rendered":"Olympics-Semenya seeks to shrug off suspicion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>By Mark Gleeson<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"articleLocation\">CAPE TOWN, June 20<\/span> (Reuters) &#8211; Caster Semenya&#8217;s overriding<br \/>\npriority this year is to leave three years of controversy behind<br \/>\nher by adding the Olympic 800 metres gold medal to her 2009<br \/>\nworld title.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The South African&#8217;s emphatic victory in Berlin raised<br \/>\nquestions about her gender and started a verification process<br \/>\nthat still clouds her achievement.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>She had emerged from obscurity to win gold in one minute<br \/>\n55.45 seconds, the fastest time of the year and a remarkable<br \/>\nimprovement on the times she had been clocking only months<br \/>\nearlier.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The strength and power of the unknown 18-year-old as she<br \/>\ndestroyed the field down the final stretch prompted the<br \/>\nInternational Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) to<br \/>\norder an investigation into possible drug use and ask for a<br \/>\ngender test.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The inquiry set off a long-running controversy, marked by<br \/>\nmedia leaks, accusations and insults that enraged her home<br \/>\ncountry and severely affected a shy girl from a rural village.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Semenya&#8217;s sexuality became the subject of widespread debate<br \/>\nand kept her off the track for almost a year before the IAAF<br \/>\ncleared her to run again. South Africa&#8217;s sports minister<br \/>\nthreatened &#8220;a third world war&#8221; if the world athletics governing<br \/>\nbody tried to ban her.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The results of the gender tests have never been published.<br \/>\nBut Australia&#8217;s Daily Telegraph reported in late 2009 that they<br \/>\nshowed that, while she had female genitalia, she was also born<br \/>\nwith undescended testes which provided her with three times the<br \/>\namount of testosterone present in an average female.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Fellow runners branded her a man and said it was unfair they<br \/>\nhad to compete against her.<br \/>\n\u00a0 <span class=\"label\"><strong>Continued&#8230;<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Mark Gleeson CAPE TOWN, June 20 (Reuters) &#8211; Caster Semenya&#8217;s overriding priority this year is to leave three years of controversy behind her by adding the Olympic 800 metres gold medal to her 2009 world title. The South African&#8217;s emphatic victory in Berlin raised questions about her gender and started a verification process that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-11670","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}