“This is just the beginning,” said hyperandrogenic South African athlete Caster Semenya on Wednesday, the day after the decision in his favor by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which found him discrimination victim.
Semenya, double Olympic champion (2012 and 2016) and triple world champion in the 800 meters event, but deprived of her favorite race because she refuses hormone treatment to lower her testosterone levels, won a legal battle before the Strasbourg-based court on Tuesday. She had seized it after the Swiss justice had confirmed in 2020 a decision of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) validating a regulation of the International Athletics Federation (renamed since the World Athletics) which limits the participation in competitions of hyperandrogenic athletes. .
Semenya, who has a natural excess of male sex hormones and has been in a standoff with World Athletics for more than a decade, described the ECHR’s decision in a statement as “significant” because it “calls into question the ‘future of all similar rules’.
However, this decision does not invalidate the regulations of the International Athletics Federation and does not directly open the way to a reinstatement of Semenya in the 800m without hormonal treatment.
World Athletics even tightened its regulations further in March concerning hyperandrogenic athletes, who must now maintain their testosterone levels below the threshold of 2.5 nanomoles per liter for 24 months (instead of 5 nanomoles for six months) to compete in the women’s category, regardless of the distance.
“My hope is that World Athletics, and beyond, all sports organizations will take into account the decision of the ECHR and ensure that the dignity and human rights of athletes are respected,” Semenya stressed.
New episodes to come?
“As the world governing body for athletics, we must take into account, and we do, the human rights of all our athletes,” the international federation replied in a press release sent to AFP. .
“Sports regulations, by their nature, limit people’s rights. When these rights are at stake, it is our responsibility to decide whether this restriction is justified by the purpose, which is, in this case, to protect women’s sport, ”she explained.
The sports-judicial soap opera around the emblematic case of Semenya could experience other episodes.
The decision of the ECHR in favor of Semenya, thus reinforced in his fight, “potentially opens the way to a new procedure before the CAS” of the South African athlete against the new even more restrictive regulations of World Athletics, advance with AFP Antoine Duval, specialist in sports law at the Asser Institute in The Hague.
“It remains to be seen whether Caster Semenya will have enough financial resources, strength and will to continue his struggle,” he continues.
As of Tuesday, World Athletics had indicated for its part that it was going to “encourage the Swiss authorities to turn to the Grand Chamber” of the ECHR, its supreme formation which officiates as a court of appeal and renders final decisions, by putting forward the “dissenting opinions” in its decision, rendered with a narrow majority of four judges against three.
In detail, the ECHR considered that Switzerland notably violated article 14 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, relating to the prohibition of discrimination, combined with article 8, which protects the right to privacy.
Semenya’s last races, a 5,000 meters and a 10,000 meters in a South African competition, were in early March.