I may be stretching it a bit, but I see parallels between Caster Semenya and the case of Alfred Dreyfus, the French Army officer who was sentenced to lifelong penal servitude for espionage in the 1880s.
Dreyfus’s plight is vividly portrayed in the open letter “J’Accuse!”, published on January 13, 1898, in the newspaper L’Aurore by the French writer Émile Zola.
Dreyfus was suspected of providing secret military information to the Germans, but Zola and many others felt his crime was really that he was Jewish, in a country and during an era where anti-Semitism was widespread.
Convicted in a secret military court-martial, he was stripped of his rank and despatched to Devil’s Island, a penal colony located off the coast of French Guiana in South America.
In 1906, Dreyfus was cleared, and awarded the Cross of the Légion d’honneur, which said he was “a soldier who has endured an unparalleled martyrdom”.
This week, our 800m Olympic and World champion Caster Semenya’s landmark case against the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) will be heard at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland.
IAAF, the governing body, wants athletes such as Semenya to reduce their testosterone levels before they compete internationally.
The new limit, which only applies to races from 400m to one mile -distances in which Caster excels -would require athletes to maintain their testosterone levels to below five nanomoles per litre (nmol/L) for at least six months before competing. For affected athletes, this would mean taking hormone suppression tablets, similar to oral contraceptives.
Caster has been severely humiliated since she burst on to the scene at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin as an 18-year-old. She’s an extremely speedy, dedicated athlete, and it is hardly true that her condition eliminates the need to train hard and practise in order to build on her natural sporting abilities.
Caster is guilty of nothing. She’s an Olympic champion and it’s time the IAAF treated her like one. If she emerges triumphant in Lausanne, it will be a victory for all those who have ever been told that they should be ashamed or change what they are.
I hope she, like Dreyfus, prevails over what’s clearly an accident of birth. She’s shown that she’s a gutsy fighter.