Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
The International Olympic Committee has acted to avoid a repeat of the Caster Semenya fiasco at next year’s London Olympics by approving new eligibility guidelines for female athletes with elevated levels of male hormones.
The measures, which include a confidential gender assessment by a panel of international experts, follows the furore over Semenya’s ambiguous gender following her runaway 800 metres victory at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin in 2009.
The South African had to endure an 11-month investigation, much of it held in the public glare, before she was finally cleared to compete as a woman by the International Association of Athletics Federations last July.
Announcing the new measures, Professor Arne Ljungqvist, chairman of the IOC Medical Commission, insisted that the guidelines had nothing to do with Semenya specifically and that protecting the integrity and fairness of female sport had long been an issue for sports organisations.
But there is no doubt that Semenya’s case was the catalyst for action after the debate over her gender descended into a damaging row between the IAAF and the South African government.
Significantly, the IAAF will be the first sports federation to introduce new gender rules based on the IOC principles when its Council meets in Daegu, South Korea, this weekend. The IOC hopes other federations will follow suit.
An IAAF spokesman confirmed that Semenya would be unaffected by the new regulations, having already been cleared to resume her career. She has run several races in South Africa and is third in the 800m world rankings.
The new measures, which were approved by the IOC executive board in London yesterday and will come into force in time for next year’s Olympics, were drawn up by a group of medical, legal and ethical experts following a scientific symposium on “disorders of sex development” held jointly by the IOC and the IAAF in Miami in January 2010 and a further high-level conference last October.
Under the guidelines, any female athlete suspected of gaining an unfair advantage from an over-production of male hormone, a condition known as “hyperandrogenism”, will be subject to an evaluation by an expert international panel.
The Minister for Sport Hugh Robertson has hit out at the dispute between the British Olympic Association and the London 2012 organisers, saying the court row “is embarrassing and we need to sort it out”.
His call was echoed by UK Sport chairwoman Baroness Sue Campbell who noted “it is not good for British sport”. Even Locog chief executive Paul Deighton admitted the dispute had “eaten away” at the good things his organisation had been achieving, but said the BOA’s claim for more money made no sense. The trio were speaking at a Sports Journalists’ Association’s question time on Tuesday night.
This comes as the International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said he would distance himself from any emotional observations concerning the legal fight between the two organisations.
Dr Rogge, in London for the global sports conference SportAccord, said he had not spoken to the BOA chairman Lord Moynihan in six weeks, and then the ongoing dispute – centring around whether a Games surplus will include the costs of the Paralympics – was not discussed.