Olympic gender test ‘a disrespect for women,’ says South Africa’s Semenya

Tuesday, 31 March 2026 03:13 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Caster Semenya

South African sprinter Caster Semenya, a two-time Olympic 800-metres champion, has said the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) reinstatement of gender verification tests for the 2028 Los Angeles Games is “a disrespect for women.”

The hyperandrogenic athlete on Sunday also expressed her disappointment that the measure was taken under new IOC President Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe.

“For me personally, for her being a woman coming from Africa, knowing how African women or women in the Global South are affected by that, of course it causes harm,” Semenya said in Cape Town on the sidelines of a sporting competition.

The IOC said on Thursday that only “biological females” will be allowed to compete in women’s events, preventing transgender women from competing.

The IOC had previously used chromosomal sex testing from 1968 to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics before abandoning it in 1999 under pressure from the scientific community, which questioned its effectiveness, and from its own athletes commission.

“It came as a failure, and that’s why it was dropped,” Semenya said. “It’s like now we need to prove that we are worthy as women to take part in sports. That’s a disrespect for women.”

Semenya has become the symbol of the struggle of hyperandrogenic athletes, a battle on the athletics tracks and then in courtrooms, to assert her rights, which she has waged since her first world title in the 800 metres in 2009.

In 2025, she won a partial victory at the European Court of Human Rights in her seven-year legal fight against track and field’s sex eligibility rules.