Caster Semenya's IAAF Challenge

Why in news?

South African 800m Olympic champion Caster Semenya lost her appeal against the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

What was the case about?

Caster Semenya had challenged the Hyperandrogenism guidelines of the IAAF which will come into effect from May 8, 2019.
It stipulated that athletes with differences in sexual development (DSDs) will need to reduce their testosterone levels.
This is a must for them to be eligible to run internationally at events between 400m and a mile (Restricted events - 400, 800m).
The three-person Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) panel rejected Semenya’s challenge against the IAAF.
Semenya can now appeal the CAS award at the Swiss Federal Tribunal within 30 days.

What are the normal levels?

The normal female range of testosterone, as indicated by the court, is 0.06 to 1.68 nanomolecures per litre (nm/L) of blood.
The correspondent male range is 7.7 to 29.4.
The hormone contributes significantly to the strengthening of muscles and the density of bones.
Its abundance is a crucial factor that makes male athletes perform better than female athletes.
Going by the guidelines, Semenya has high testosterone level (T-level) and will have to take medication to reduce it to within 5nm/L.
She has to maintain this for six months ahead of competition, if she wants to run her pet 800m.

What was the contention?

Semenya recently raced and won the South African 5000m, an event she can run without suppressing her T-levels.
She has maintained that there was nothing wrong in her running with her natural levels of testosterone.
She disagreed on medically tampering with her hormones.
But the IAAF saw the guidelines as a means of preserving fair and meaningful competition within female classification.

What are the concerns raised by CAS?

CAS did admit that the IAAF policy was discriminatory to athletes with DSD.
It however added that such discrimination was a necessary, reasonable and proportionate one.
It was inevitable in achieving the IAAF’s aim of preserving the integrity of female athletics in the Restricted Events.
So it was unable to establish that IAAF’s DSD regulations were “invalid”.
Nevertheless, CAS expressed some concerns over the application of the IAAF regulations:

the unintentional non-compliance of the strict testosterone levels
the difficulty of maintaining the levels over 6 months and on the day of competition

There is also, at present, a lack of clarity over the exact advantage higher testosterone offers over the 800m distance.
So CAS suggested deferring the application of the regulations to the 1500m and the mile till more evidence was made available.
The CAS also raised an alarm over the “practical impossibility” of compliance citing side effects of hormonal treatment.

The IAAF has the task of protecting the rights of female runners with lower T-levels (under 2 nmol/L) which is 99% women.
However, asking the outliers (DSD athletes), who have done no wrong or cheated, to bring down T-levels is contentious.

Source: Indian Express, Livemint