Olympic champion wins human rights court appeal against testosterone rules

11 July 2023 , 08:54

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Caster Semenya continues to fight against using testosterone-reducing drugs (Image: Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Olympic 800m champion Caster Semenya has won her appeal at the European Court of Human Rights in a case involving testosterone levels in female athletes.

Semenya, 32, was legally identified as female at birth but has a condition which means her body naturally produces higher levels of testosterone than women without the condition. The South African runner's differences of sexual development (DSD) mean that she isn't allowed to compete in events between 400m and a mile without taking testosterone-reducing drugs.

Due to this, Semenya has been in a lengthy dispute with World Athletics since regulations requiring her to take hormone treatment to decrease her natural testosterone levels were introduced five years ago. On two previous occasions, at the Court of Arbitration for Sport and the Swiss Federal Supreme Court, she failed in legal battles to overturn the decision.

The recent case at the ECHR, however, was against the government of Switzerland for not protecting her rights and dates back to a Swiss Supreme Court ruling in 2020. A statement issued on Tuesday read: "The Court found in particular that the applicant had not been afforded sufficient institutional and procedural safeguards in Switzerland to allow her to have her complaints examined effectively, especially since her complaints concerned substantiated and credible claims of discrimination as a result of her increased testosterone level caused by differences of sex development (DSD)."

The regulations meant that she was unable to defend her 800m title at the Covid-delayed Tokyo Olympics, which eventually took place in 2021. Semenya, a three-time world champion, put forward the argument that taking testosterone-reducing medication could endanger her health, adding that the ruling denied her and other athletes with DSD the right to rely on their natural abilities.

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During an interview with the BBC in 2019, Semenya said that her long-running battle had "destroyed" her "mentally and physically". She added: "We are talking about human rights. We are talking about people being freed. People living their lives for who they are. It's wrong to judge people. Its wrong to discriminate people and also to divide people.

"We are all human. It doesn't matter what differences that we have in our bodies. At the end of the day, sport unites people and it speaks to the youth in a language they understand." Semenya went on to ask: "Why do you have to drug someone? So you want them to fit in. There is nothing like that in life."

Caster Semenya is a three-time 800m world champions but couldn't defend her title in the Tokyo Olympics (Getty)

Semenya has said that she took medication after the first ruling by World Athletics - which was then the International Association of Athletics Federations - in 2011 which declared that all female athletes with hyperandrogenism would have to medically lower their testosterone levels.

"It made me sick, made me gain weight, panic attacks, I don't know if I was ever going to have a heart attack," Semenya revealed to HBO Real Sports. "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 Olympics, that's the only option for me."

In a statement, World Athletics said: "World Athletics notes the judgment of the deeply divided Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). We remain of the view that the DSD regulations are a necessary, reasonable and proportionate means of protecting fair competition in the female category as the Court of Arbitration for Sport and Swiss Federal Tribunal both found, after a detailed and expert assessment of the evidence.

"The case was filed against the state of Switzerland, rather than World Athletics. We will liaise with the Swiss Government on the next steps and, given the strong dissenting views in the decision, we will be encouraging them to seek referral of the case to the ECHR Grand Chamber for a final and definitive decision. In the meantime, the current DSD regulations, approved by the World Athletics Council in March 2023, will remain in place."

Nathan Ridley