Caster Semenya To Tackle 1500m As Well

The London Olympics will be taking place next summer, and 2009 800m world champion Caster Semenya of South Africa has decided she will attempt to go for the gold in the 1500m as well.

"I'm going for my second successive gold medal in Daegu in August," she said to the Guardian. "This will also be part of my preparations for the 2012 London Olympics. I'm looking forward to my first Olympics and the plan is to include the 1500 meters."

She's prepping for the 2011 World Championships by  not only running races in her homeland, but an upcoming May 28 event in Dakar, Senegal and the Nike Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, OR on June 4.  

The Nike Prefontaine event will be a major test as to whether Semenya is close to being back to her championship level form that shocked the world in Berlin.       

The 2011  IAAF World Championships will be held in Daegu, Korea from August 27-September 4.   I'm  hoping that after all the unnecessary drama she was put through she not only wins gold at Daegu, but I hope she does the same next summer in London as well.

Semenya Skipping Commonwealth Games.

This star crossed edition of the Commonwealth Games has its opening ceremonies in Delhi, India today, but there will be one well known athlete who organizers and others were hoping would bring some star power to the event that won't be coming.

2009 800m world champion Caster Semenya won't be part of the South African team for these games.  She's staying home to deal with a back problem.

She stated that she'd been having serious lower back pain and had not been comfortable during her last few races. 

The South African sports authorities want to save her for more high profile events such as the 2011 IAAF Athletics World Championships and the London Olympics.

"It would serve no purpose to have an athlete in Delhi who was struggling with any sort of injury that would compromise performance and it is our medical view that physically and emotionally she would not be capable of doing justice to her talent at an event of this magnitude," said Team South Africa's Chief Medical Officer Shuaib Majra.

 While it would have been nice to see you run and win in Delhi, the 2011 IAAF Championships and the 2012 Games are the bigger prize.    Get well and hope to see you kicking butt and taking names in the world's various meets soon.

If Semenya Looked This, Y'all Wouldn't Be Hatin'

This is Czech runner and 1980 Moscow Games 400m silver medalist Jarmila Kratochvilova, the current 800m world record holder.

She entered the 800m at a July 26, 1983 meet in Munich, Germany as a training exercise and the rest is history. Her time of 1:53.28 in that race not only smashed the then world record of 1:53.43 held by Russia's Nadezhda Olisarenko, it is currently the oldest world athletics record on the books.

One of the things that has pissed me off in this whole Caster Semenya saga since it started last year is the undercurrent of bigotry and the denigration of her femininity by the vanilla flavored peanut gallery.

Some of the haters throwing 'that's a man' shade at Semenya within the 800m world damned sure wouldn't be on the modeling catwalks themselves or on the stage competing for their nations in the Miss Universe pageant.

But let's get to the crux of what I suspect is some of the motivation behind the hatin' on this talented 19 year old South African runner.

There has been a long line of African descended female sprinters since the 60's that have come over time to dominate the sprint races (the 100m, 100m hurdles, 200m, 400m, 400m hurdles, the 4X100 and 4x400 relays) in what the world calls athletics.

They have also etched their names into the sports record books. The next oldest world record held by a woman is Flo-Jo's blistering 10.49 100m time she set in Indianapolis during the US Olympic trials in 1988,

In the long distance races such as the 3000m steeplechase, 5000m, 10,000m and the marathon, those are increasingly either being dominated by eastern African runners and Asian runners or the European dominance of them is being challenged.

Now that challenge to European dominance is happening in the middle distance races such as the 800m and 1500m.

During the 2008 Beijing Olympics the medals in that race were all won by runners from African nations, with Pamela Jelimo of Kenya taking the gold.

Want to guess who was the person Semenya passed in August 2009 to become the fifth fastest 800m runner of all time?

Pamela Jelimo.

Now a young runner from South Africa comes along seemingly out of nowhere like Pamela Jelimo did in 2008 to win the 2009 world championship in the event. Factor in that Semenya has three years to improve on that time, she's of African descent and has non standard feminine presentation, and let the 'unwoman' hate flow.

But peep another picture of Kratochvilova from back in the day. Sure didn't hear much 'that's a man' shade coming from the vanilla flavored peanut gallery at the time.

No clamor to have Kratochvilova immediately slapped in stirrups and subjected to a humiliating and invasive 'gender verification' examination. No enduring an 11 month competition ban as your competitors gleefully denigrated your gender presentation in front of rolling television cameras.

Nope, don't recall that happening.

It's why I'm hoping that Semenya not only breaks that 800m world record, it would be even sweeter if she did so while snatching the gold medal in London two years from now.

Peeps Still Hatin' on Semenya

For the first time since she was reinstated by the IAAF to compete, South African 800m world champion Caster Semenya faced world class competition in her event.

On Sunday she ran her third race since she was was forced to sit out 11 months to undergo gender verification testing at the behest of the IAAF after running the fifth fastest 800m time for a woman in last year's World Championships.

She returned to the scene of last year's triumph in Berlin and showed little effects from the alleged HRT she's undergoing and lack of elite level competition. She won the race by closing a 20 meter gap down the homestretch to win in 1:59:90.



But her competitors are still chomping Hater Tots and drinking Hateraid Fierce from 55 gallon drums.

British runner Jemma Simpson, who finished fourth in this race, let loose in a Telegraph interview.

"It's obviously a human rights issue but human rights affect everyone in the race, not just one person," Simpson said. "The rest of the field just gets ignored. No way is it a personal issue but it's a debate about what is right and fair for everyone. It's a really tough subject and a lot of people are very careful about what they say. You have to be.

"You have to be diplomatic and keep your opinions to yourself but sometimes it is so frustrating."

Canadian runner Diane Cummins plied on in her interviews comments.

"Unfortunately for Caster, she's grown up in an environment that is complicated not just for her but for human science. Basically, is she man, is she lady? What constitutes male, what constitutes female?"

"Even if she is a female, she's on the very fringe of the normal athlete female biological composition from what I understand of hormone testing. So, from that perspective, most of us just feel that we are literally running against a man."

"It is certainly frustrating to be running against someone who seems to be doing it effortlessly. We all believe that Caster Semenya, pushed to her full potential, could break the world record.

Well, lets see what her family has to say.

Semenya's grandmother said in a BBC interview last year, "I know she’s a woman – I raised her myself. If you go at my home village and ask any of my neighbors, they would tell you that Mokgadi (Semenya's given name) is a girl. They know because they helped raise her. People can say whatever they like but the truth will remain, which is that my child is a girl. I am not concerned about such things."

Canadian cyclist Kristen Worley, who attempted to become the first trans Olympian ever in 2008, is a co-founder of the Coalition of Athletes for Inclusion in Sport. She said the 19-year-old runner’s gender should never have been in question and blasted Cummins.

“She’s ignorant,” Worley said. “You’ve got a bunch of athletes who are women who are upset because they’re not running fast enough. It’s bad sportsmanship, that’s what this is. … It’s totally sour grapes.”

Worley took aim at the gender based performance double standard vis a vis Usain Bolt and Caster Semenya.

“Basically when Usain shows up, it’s a question of who’s going to be second and third. That’s a given,” she said. “We make him king of the day. We make him world champion. We the media, we society say ‘Usain, go faster, show us what you can do.’

“But when a woman does it, who didn’t actually set a world record (in winning at the Berlin worlds last year), who (more than 10) women have run faster than her, who didn’t set a meet record, we throw her into stirrups and virtually rape her. We did that because of the way her face looks and her voice.”

I agree and have said it since this controversy broke out last year. It's sour grapes tinged with transphobic bigotry.

Just win, Caster. The London Games are only two years away.

Caster Wins!

800m world champion Caster Semenya finally got to run a race for the first time since her world championship run in Berlin 11 months ago. It was in a small Finnish town 135 miles (220 kilometers) east of Helsinki at the Lappeenranta Games.

She won it in 2:04.22 - not even close to the 1:55.45 she clocked while taking the gold at the IAAF World Championships, but Semenya was happy with it.

"To come and run a 2:04 is not easy, especially after what happened," Semenya said. "I was a little bit nervous because it has been a long time not competing."

"It's a new beginning," she added.

Her next race is at the Lapinlahti Games on Sunday before she heads back to South Africa to continue training. There's a possibility she may compete in the African Championships in Nairobi, Kenya in two weeks, but she's working toward being in championship form for the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, India this October.

Caster Semenya Finally Races Today

Caster Semenya will participate in an 800m race at the Lappeenranta Games in Finland today. It's her first race for the 800 meters world champion since she was cleared by the IAAF to compete last Tuesday.

She was left off South Africa’s team for the African championships which start July 28 in Kenya and according to the South Africa’s athletics federation the 19 year old would work toward qualifying for the Commonwealth Games being held in Delhi, India this October.

“She is really looking forward to the competition but is not expecting anything great,” her manager Jukka Harkonen said to a reporter Thursday. “She’s in the middle of her training right now, but needs the experience of competing again.”

So am I, Caster. Hope you kick butt and take names all the way to the 2012 London Olympic Games and beyond.

Coming Soon To A Track Near You-Caster Semenya!

800m world champion Caster Semenya of South Africa has had a tumultuous eleven months ever since she claimed the championship in convincing fashion at last year's IAAF World Championships in Berlin in the fifth fastest time ever run by a female athlete.

The now 19-year-old Semenya was given the green light to run again after a review by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) of her gender verification tests.

The approval clears the last hurdle standing in her way to compete in IAAF sanctioned international track events. She can compete as early as the IAAF World Junior Championships taking place in Moncton, NB, Canada July 19-25 and the October 3-14 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India.

The IAAF said in a statement on the matter, "The IAAF accepts the conclusion of a panel of medical experts that she can compete with immediate effect."

"The medical details of the case remain confidential and the IAAF will make no further comment on the matter."

Semenya and South Africa were obviously happy about the IAAF decision.

"I am thrilled to enter the global athletics arena once again and look forward to competing with all the disputes behind me," she said in a statement released by her lawyers.

Her attorney Jeffrey Kessler said, "We are delighted that Caster is finally being permitted to compete with other women, as is her legal and natural right."

"Hopefully, this resolution will set a precedent so that no female athlete in the future will have to experience the long delays and public scrutiny which Caster has been forced to endure."

Ruling ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu stated about the decision, "The ANC welcomes the decision by the IAAF to finally clear our 'golden girl', Caster Semenya, to participate in all athletics meetings as well as the international ones as a woman,"

"The decision by the IAAF of clearing Caster is a vindication of the ANC, her family, our government and all progressive forces who stood behind her during her time of need."

Mthembu added: "We appeal to all South Africans and people of the world and other athletes to assist Caster in putting the unfortunate past behind her so that she can continue on what she does best, which is running."

Alright, Caster! Hope you kick ass, take names and will be standing in 2012 on the top steps of the victory podium in London holding the 800m Olympic gold medal.

More Semenya Setbacks

800m World Champion runner Caster Semenya of South Africa has been impatiently waiting to get back on the track since she burst onto the international track scene at the 2009 IAAF World Championships in Berlin.

She blistered the field with a 1:55:45 time that is the fifth best time ever run by a woman in history, and ever since then has been dogged by questions about her gender. The IAAF ordered gender test results are supposed to be available later this month.

Semenya is understandably frustrated and angry about the delays and being denied the opportunity to compete in a meet at Stellenbosch, South Africa at the request of Athletics South Africa (ASA). The ASA has counseled the 19 year old to await the IAAF gender test results before she returns to 800 meter racing.

She was left off the South African team competing in the 2010 IAAF African Championships in Nairobi, Kenya July 28 despite having qualified for it by virtue of her championship winning time in Berlin.

Semenya announced her intention to return to competition at the June 24 EAA meet in Zaragoza, Spain.

However, the Zaragoza EAA meet has been cancelled due to a budget shortfall according to the meet organizers. It had been in financial difficulties in past years and the Spanish Athletics Federation stated there was no chance of it returning this year.

So once again, Caster Semenya's return to track is on hold along with a definitive resolution to this gender controversy that has been painfully public for her and glacially slow in the way it has played out.

The cynic in me says maybe that was the intent in the first place, since the London Olympic Games are only two years away.

We'll find out at the end of the month.

Caster Semenya's Patience Running Out

19 year old South African runner Caster Semenya has patiently waited seven months for her competition status to be sorted out ever since she won the 800m world championship in Berlin last summer.

But it seems that her patience, and the patience of her attorneys is wearing thin.

"I hereby publicly announce my return to athletics competitions," Semenya said in a statement. "I am an athlete first and foremost, and it is vital for my competitiveness, my well-being and my preparations for events during the European summer that I measure my performance against other athletes."

"These processes have dragged on for far too long with no reasonable certainty as to their end."

She wants to return to international competition at a IAAF sanctioned race being contested in Zaragoza, Spain on June 24, the EAA Classic.

The IAAF medical staff has yet to complete the gender verification tests, and the ASA (Athletics South Africa) is uncomfortably caught in the middle along with Semenya until they do. They assert that until those test are completed, she is i9neligible to run either in South Africa or internationally.

Athletics South Africa acting chief Ray Mali asked "for the patience of Semenya and her advisers in the interest of all parties."

But I ask the question, how patient would you be if you were in Semenya's pumps?

She wants to run and get better with the Olympics only two years away and she's being forced to sit on the sidelines until some Monaco based bureaucrats make a decision?

To add to the drama, how patient would you be if your gender identity were subjected to worldwide speculation, attacks and derision while you're waiting for that sporting bureaucratic decision?

And while you're waiting, you sit with the knowledge that your potential competition you destroyed in Berlin are competing and honing their skills against each other.

"Some of the occurrences leading up to and immediately following the Berlin World Championships have infringed on not only my rights as an athlete," she said, "but also my fundamental and human rights, including my rights to dignity and privacy."

It's time for the IAAF medical team to end this, and get off their behinds and complete the medical verification tests as expeditiously as possible.

And after that happens, I'll be rooting for Semenya to kick some butt in every 800m race she runs from now until the Olympic Games in London and beyond.

IAAF-'No Discussion Of Caster Semenya's Case At The IAAF Council Meeting '

Well, well, well. We were expecting some serious drama and fireworks at this session of the International Association of Athletics Federations, the world governing body for what we call track and field in the States.

The IAAF Council is meeting in Monaco as we speak. When the Caster Semenya drama first exploded into the world's consciousness in the wake of her historic 800m victory at the World Championships in Berlin, the IAAF indicated they would wait until November and this Council Meeting to make a decision concerning the South African teen's international athletic status.

Peep this press release from the IAAF dated November 18, 2009

The IAAF, the South African Ministry of Sport and Recreation and Caster Semenya’s representatives have been and still are in discussions with a view to resolving the issues surrounding Caster Semenya’s participation in Athletics.

The IAAF will not comment upon the medical aspects of Caster Semenya’s case. The medical testing of the athlete is still to be completed.

There will be no discussion of Caster Semenya’s case at the forthcoming IAAF Council Meeting to be held in Monaco on 20-21 November 2009. No further comment will be made
on this subject until further notice.

The South African Sports Ministry in a statement posted on its website stated that the International Association of Athletics Federations has agreed to allow the 18-year-old Semenya to keep her prize money.

"Because Caster has been found to be innocent ... she will then retain her gold medal," the ministry said.

"Whatever scientific tests were conducted legally within the IAAF regulations will be treated as a confidential matter between patient and doctor," the sports ministry said. "As such there will be no public announcement of what the panel of scientists has found. We urge all South Africans and other people to respect this professional ethical and moral way of doing things."

White that's good news, it has yet to be confirmed by the IAAF. In addition, no definitive decision has yet been made about whether Semenya remains eligible to compete as a woman.

So stay turned, there will be another chapter it seems to the ongoing spots soap opera.

Caster Semenya Case Opening Old Wounds

I was watching the track and field championships in Berlin last month when Caster Semenya won her 800m gold medal in the fifth fastest time ever run by a woman.

But as I know from my time on planet Earth, if an African descended female athlete excels in spectacular fashion, we get accused of cheating or have ‘that’s a man’ shade hurled at us.

When you combine it with the hypercompetitive world of international sports in which national pride and prestige is on the line, it was inevitable that somebody would try to find a way to knock this talented runner out of international competition, especially with the 2012 London Olympic Games on the horizon.

Gender testing for female athletes exists thanks to the blatant cheating of Nazi Germany in 1936, several former Communist bloc nations sending female athletes into competition with questionable external gender characteristics, and the East Germans feeding their female athletes steroids for more than a decade,

But in 18 year old Caster Semenya’s case, it’s ripping the scab off some old wounds. The ripple effects of this case are reverberating across the African diaspora.

For us African descended people in North America, we see it as the continued centuries old attack on the images of African descended women and our femininity.

It’s even more acute for Black women involved in sports. The Williams sisters have not only dominated the sport of tennis in the 2K’s, but these proud, statuesque ladies are making history off the court as well.

I and many other tennis fans found it quite curious when the 2009 Australian Open website omitted them from their list of the 10 Most Beautiful Women.

It wasn’t surprising that the list was full of Eastern Europeans in addition to fawning commentary about Jelena Jankovich’s ‘Number One body to go with her (then) Number One ranking’.

The old saying is beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Black women have always been seen thanks to racist myths rooted in slavery as ‘unfeminine’ vis a vis the vanilla flavored beauty standard.

If you think I’m off base, here’s a challenge for you.

Go to your favorite bookstore or drug store and head to the magazine rack. See if you can find a beauty magazine aimed at a predominately white female audience that has an African-descended woman on the cover.

And no, Oprah magazine doesn’t count.

Our continental African cousins see this in the context of the European colonial powers seeking to embarrass Africa.

Despite the fact that the current president of the Monaco based IAAF, Lamine Diack is from Senegal, the IAAF leadership since its inception in 1912 has been dominated by Europeans.

Continental Africans still haven’t forgotten how 800m runner and 2000 Olympic champion Maria Mutola of Mozambique was dogged throughout her illustrious decade long career by ‘that’s a man’ accusations despite passing test after test.

The way the Semenya case has been handled by the IAAF has only crystallized that impression on the mother Continent.

It’s probably why officials in South Africa are backing her all the way. Makhenkesi Stofile, South Africa’s sports minister said that Semenya and her family maintain she was gender-tested without her consent and that lawyers were being consulted over possible action.

In addition, Stofile has written to the IAAF demanding an apology and seeking a response to those Australian reports claiming that she’s intersex.

Yes, if he IAAF had questions, they should have quietly done those tests. Somebody leaked the info in Berlin that got this hot mess started. It’s also not a coincidence that another leak in this case results in an Australian newspaper publishing those allegations that Stofile reacted to with “shock and disgust”.

You have to feel for Semenya in this case. It has not only put her personal business out there, but has been done so in the most humiliatingly public way possible

In the meantime, her athletic future rests on the results of the gender test and an IAAF Council meeting set to take place in Monaco November 20-21.

Semenya has also received some advice and support from India’s Santhi Soundajaran, the last woman to be subjected to this type of withering international scrutiny.

“She should not let them take away her medal or allow one test to determine her fate. “She is a woman and that’s it, full stop,” Soundarajan says. “A gender test cannot take away from you who you are.”

Even if the people behind this are determined to take away her 800m world championship.


Crossposted from Feministe

19.19

Usain 'Lightning' Bolt strikes again.

He wore a practice t-shirt with the words 'Ich bin ein Berliner' on it, and he wasn't joking. Berlin has definitely been his town over the last few days.

Fresh off of breaking his own world record in the 100m final a few days ago, he set his sights on eradicating his one year old record in the 200m that he set during last year's Beijing Games.

And just like in the 100m meter final, he lowered the record by .11 seconds.

This may have been the stadium in which Jesse Owens triumphantly won four gold medals in 1936, but Usain Bolt and his Jamaican track teammates are turning it and these World Track and Field Championships into their own personal playground.

In addition to setting five world records in his last five major races, Bolt is the first and only track athlete to simultaneously hold the Olympic and world records in the 100m and 200m.

The only question left for the world now is whether he'll win the 100m and 200m in the same record breaking fashion in London two years from now.

9.58!

When we watched Jamaica's Usain Bolt destroy the old 100 meter world record and showboat his way over the last ten meters to a 9.68 time enroute to the gold medal, many of us wondered how fast could the 23 year old run if he ran flat out for 100 meters?

In the 2009 World Track and Field Championships being held in Berlin, we may have gotten an answer to that question.

In the same stadium in which Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Games, and exactly one year from the date he set the record in Beijing last summer, Usain Bolt obliterated it.

He ran an out of this world 9.58 in the 100m final. If you had any doubts that this man is the real deal and the best sprinter in the world bar none, I think he answered them.

Tyson Gay finished second in 9.71 and became as a consolation prize, the American record holder in the event and the second fastest man of all time.

If he stays healthy over the next two years, it's probably safe to say that Bolt will be a prohibitive favorite to repeat his gold medal winning performance in London. There's no one on this planet who can run with him.

Believe it or not, Bolt thinks he can run even faster and lower the record to a mind bending 9.4 seconds.

I don't have any doubts that he can't.