Sorry, just two more things to add after reading the thread again:
First, Oddball wrote:
"Couple of things I don't understand:
1) Why wasn't this situation cleared up before the world championships? It's like the IAAF purposely timed this to humiliate Semenya as much as possible."
The same thing was raised by Timely.
I think in response to that, the onus would be on ASA, not the IAAF, since she had only really competed in ASA events up to that point. My previous post makes the point that ASA either wilfully ignored the problem (trying to pull a fast one, as someone said), or were incompetent to deal with it, but it was not really the IAAF's problem
as I understand it, the IAAF only do this gender testing if someone protests, and so that must have happened, but could only happen in the World champs. They wouldn't have done it before - it's the federations issue, and that was ASA.
Then second, why no effort said:
"if she was trying to masquerade as a woman, why didn't she at least attempt to adopt some culturally female traits? She could have:
- Grown her hair long and dyed it a lighter color.
- Waxed her face to remove any trace of facial hair.
- Worn makeup.
- Padded her bra.
She could have tried acting feminine, but instead she swaggered around and mumbled like a teenage guy. I wonder why she made no effort?"
I think it's important to recognize that she may not know it herself. Well, to clarify, she definitely knows it now, but this is a girl who grew up in a tiny rural town and would not have encountered this until much later, and may genuinely believe she is female. And I must make the point, she is female. It's not a question of whether she is male or female, but rather whether she is "entirely female", as I understand the criteria.
So Semenya is not trying to cheat, and she's not pulling a fast one herself. The gender testing problem, mentioned above, is the issue here.
Ross