"F**k it, they don’t know s**t about that" - Caster Semenya on taking medication to lower testosterone levels
Caster Semenya has had a notable career so far. She has secured two Olympic gold medals and four world championship medals, including three gold. The 32-year-old also has medals from the Commonwealth Games and African Championships to her name.
But everything wasn't a smooth sail from this South African middle-distance runner. She had to go through a slew of jibes when people questioned her gender. A day before her race at the 2009 Berlin World Championships, she was asked to take a gender verification test, and the results disclosed that she had thrice the testosterone in her system than any average woman.
Semenya had to undergo a process to bring her naturally high testosterone level down to a level accepted by the IAAF. She had to consume hormonal contraceptives as a part of the system. In a recent interview, via The Guardian, Semenya revealed the difficulties she had to go through while she was on medication.
Semenya stated that it harmed her health as she woke up every day with a sore body and a burning stomach. She stated that she would suffer panic attacks and experienced heavy sweating.
Speaking about the negative health effects, Semenya held the IAAF and World Athletics and their officials responsible, asserting they lacked knowledge about the medication and the procedure.
"Those are the things that people don’t understand when World Athletics says: ‘Take this medication.’ F**k them. Those m***********s must go take the medication themselves, then tell us how they feel. They’ll say: ‘Oh, these medications were well supervised.’ F**k it – they don’t know s**t about that."
"It wasn’t an easy journey, but I had to make it look easy," Caster Semenya on her journey to success
Undeterred by the challenges Caster Semenya faced in her journey, she never gave up and continued to compete in races.
She expressed that her journey wasn't an easy one. But she accepted herself and kept working toward her goal which she achieved with great pride.
“In that time, it wasn’t an easy journey, but I had to make it look easy. I had to learn how to enjoy that, how to live with it, regardless of what it made me feel and how it made my body change. That didn’t matter. What mattered most was me running the race, pi**ing [the IAAF] off, making sure that I won medals."
In 2018, the IAAF started prevalent usage of the term DSD (Differences of Sexual Development) — a condition where the body of a female produces high amounts of testosterone. Semenya is one of several female athletes that the terminology applies to (h/t Olympics.com).
Caster Semenya competed at the 2022 World Athletics Championships in Oregon but failed to make it to the 5000m final, which would have been her first world final since 2017.