Caster Semenya will be at the Paris 2024 Olympics – but not as a competitor

After missing out on the Olympics in 2020, Caster Semenya has turned to coaching instead of competing at the Paris 2024 Games, which started this week.

Middle-distance runner Semenya has been working as an assistant coach at the TuksAthletics Academy at the University of Pretoria, in South Africa, under the tutelage of her former coach, Samuel Sepeng.

Many are calling her “an icon” within South African athletics.

She won Olympic gold in the women’s 800m in London in 2012 and again in Rio four years later.

But, in May 2019, new regulations introduced by World Athletics prevented female athletes with Differences in Sexual Development (DSD) from competing in middle-distance track events, unless they artificially reduced their testosterone levels.

Semenya has hyperandrogenism, a condition that gives her higher-than-usual levels of testosterone, which could increase muscle mass and strength. The athlete branded the rules discriminatory and unfair and insisted she would not take any testosterone-suppressing medication. 

She won an appeal at the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled she had been discriminated against.

“At the end of the day, I know I am different. I don’t care about the medical terms,” Semenya told the BBC. “Being born without a uterus or with internal testicles, [doesn’t] make me less of a woman. Those are the differences I was born with and I will embrace them.

“I am not going to be ashamed because I am different. I am different and special and I feel great about it.”

Since then, Semenya has moved to longer-distance events, which are not subject to the World Athletics regulations, reaching her first World Athletics Championships in 2021 in the women’s 5000m and finishing fourth in a 4x2km mixed relay team at the World Cross Country Championships, in Australia.

Semenya had set her sights set on the Paris Olympics, but didn’t qualify.

After missing out on the Olympics in 2020, Caster Semenya has turned to coaching instead of competing at the Paris Games, which start later this month.

Middle-distance runner Semenya has been working as an assistant coach at the TuksAthletics Academy at the University of Pretoria, in South Africa, under the tutelage of her former coach, Samuel Sepeng.

Many are calling her “an icon” within South African athletics.

Semenya Olympic gold medals the women’s 800m in London in 2012 and again in Rio four years later.

But, in May 2019, new regulations introduced by World Athletics prevented female athletes with Differences in Sexual Development (DSD) from competing in middle-distance track events – unless they artificially reduced their testosterone levels.

Semenya has hyperandrogenism, a condition that gives her higher than usual levels of testosterone, which could increase muscle mass and strength.

The athlete branded the rules discriminatory and unfair and insisted she would not take any testosterone-suppressing medication. She won an appeal at the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled she had been discriminated against.

“At the end of the day, I know I am different. I don’t care about the medical terms,” Semenya told the BBC. “Being born without a uterus or with internal testicles, [doesn’t] make me less of a woman. Those are the differences I was born with and I will embrace them.

“I am not going to be ashamed because I am different. I am different and special and I feel great about it.”

Since then, Semenya has moved to longer-distance events, which are not subject to the World Athletics regulations, reaching her first World Athletics Championships in 2021 in the women’s 5000m and finishing fourth in a 4x2km mixed relay team at the World Cross Country Championships, in Australia.

Semenya had set her sights set on the Paris Olympics, but she has not qualified to compete for South Africa.

“My fitness levels will decide my destiny. The target will be the Olympics,” she told City Press last year. “Not that this season is not important, but I’m still maturing in the long distance. I’m in the adaptation phase and my body is starting to fit with it. I’m just enjoying myself at the moment, and things will fall into place at the right time.”

You can read all of our Paris Olympics 2024 coverage here.