I find the controversy over Caster Semenya fascinating. I remember her bursting onto the scene in the 2009 World Championships. Jan and I both thought, by looking at her and seeing the dominating performance, that she was a he, or at least doping.
It turns out we were/are wrong. Now I'm not sure how to feel. If I were a competitor of hers I might be upset or thinking I have no chance to win. But the same could be true with many athletes who have natural, physical gifts. Some people want to have female athletes who have "abnormal" natural levels of testosterone to take a drug to lower it back to "normal" levels. Is that really fair? Semenya surely isn't the first female athlete who had a naturally occurring high testosterone advantage. Authorities either looked the other way and didn't want to deal with the issue, or didn't have the tests that would accurately monitor a person's levels.
Even if an athlete were given drugs to lower their level of testosterone, would they have to take it constantly throughout their career or just when nearing competition? How would the drug effect their long-term health? If the athlete only took the drug close to the Olympics, say, but didn't have to use it during training, wouldn't they still have an advantage? The high testosterone would allow them to train harder, lift more, run more, than competitors, so they would still arrive at the event with an advantage, similar to the PED users who try to come clean right before a big competition.
Someone will have to explain to me why an athlete such as Semenya really needs to be given drugs to lower a natural occurring substance in her body. Right now I say leave her alone and let her run.
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