Is this Hassan’s opener ? It will definitely be a fast race, she will like push hard from the gun to run the kick out of Niyonsaba. I imagine Semenya will be a nonfactor. She hasn’t been able to translate her success to longer distances as well as Niyonsaba.
I cannot see Semenya finishing top 6. Hassan over Niyonsaba if she is any type of form. Koko and Beatrice Chebet next two.
But if Semenya wasn't famous, and the average Joe or Jane saw Semenya out and about in the world, either alone or with Semenya's wife and their two kids, no one would look twice at Semenya
"their two kids."
If there ever was a major clue, that is it. Everyone knows that he's not a woman. This travesty against women and women's competitions needs to be stopped right away.
For those unaware: two months after the CAS decision was released in 2019 and revealed that Semenya is XY with 5-ARD, an enzyme deficiency that occurs in both males and females but only affects the sex development of males, Semenya's wife Violet Raseboya gave birth to the couple's first child, a daughter.
Last year, Raseboya gave birth to the couple's second child. The sex of the younger child has not yet been revealed. However, a family photo Semenya posted online for the 2021 Christmas holidays suggests the newer arrival is a girl too because one of those awful oversized bows on a stretchy headband was on the child's head.
Other family photos posted online show Semenya's older daughter at 1-2 dressed in pink clothing and impractical dresses and "girly" attire too. Seems Semenya and Raseboya don't believe in allowing little kids to grow up free of sex stereotypes.
Oy vey, Semenya is going for headlines again. From today's The Telegraph:
In an explosive interview with HBO Real Sports, the two-time Olympic 800 metres champion and poster girl for athletes with differences in sex development (DSD) proclaimed artificially lowering her natural testosterone levels in order to compete in women’sraces was “like stabbing yourself with a knife every day”.
Caster Semenya has accused athletics chiefs who “thought I had a dick” of forcing her to take medication that “tortured” her and made her so sick she feared she would have a heart attack.
“They thought I had a dick, probably,” she said. “I told them: ‘It’s fine. I’m a female, I don’t care. If you want to see I’m a woman, I will show you my vagina. All right?’”
After Semenya underwent medical testing, it emerged she had been born with internal testes.
She was told that in order to continue running in women’s races, she would need to take medication [estrogen pills usually used by women for contraception and menstrual cycle management] to lower her natural testosterone levels.
She said: “It made me sick, made me gain weight, panic attacks, I don't know if I was ever going to have a heart attack. It’s like stabbing yourself with a knife every day. But I had no choice.
“I’m 18, I want to run, I want to make it to [the] Olympics, that’s the only option for me. But I had to make it work.”
Jonathan Taylor, World Athletics’ lawyer, disputed that the medication given to Semenya and others was unhealthy.
He told the programme: “You say, medically, it’s not healthy for me, then my question back to you is: ‘Why do the world’s leading experts say that that is what we would prescribe?’
But Semenya hit back: “Jonathan must cut his tongue and throw it away. If he wants to understand how that thing has tortured me, he must go and take those medications. He will understand.”
Semenya scored an own goal there. If Jonathan Taylor went on birth control pills loaded with estrogen and felt unwell, it would be for the same reason that Semenya felt "tortured" on the pills: both are males, the sex those pills were not formulated for. The estrogen pills lowered Semenya's testosterone to a level where most males accustomed to large amounts of testosterone squarely in the normal male range would not feel or be at their best.
Also, given that hundreds of millions of women take these same exact medications and stay on them even with myriad negative "side effects" because they find it's the most reliable way for them to avoid unwanted pregnancy - a big concern for girls and women of childbearing age - Semenya's complaints about being "tortured" won't win Semenya much sympathy amongst many members of the female sex.
I don't think Semenya is aware that in 2022 many people are a lot more informed about DSDs - and about Semenya's specific DSD condition and life story - than the general public and sports press were back in 2009 when Semenya first made international headlines. No one who has read the 2019 CAS decision in Semenya's case against the IAAF/WA is in the dark anymore. Many of us aren't quite as dim-witted as Semenya seems to think, either.
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