Double 800m Olympic champion Caster Semenya has won her appeal at the European Court of Human Rights after successfully challenging track and field’s testosterone rules.
The double 800m Olympic champion claimed she had been discriminated against after women with natural high testosterone were forced to reduce those levels through medication.
The 32-year-old South African approached the France-based court in February, 2021 after losing appeals to CAS, sport’s highest court, and another plea to the Swiss Federal Tribunal (SFT) in a long-running legal battle against the regulations.
The Strasbourg-based rights court ruled in Semenya’s favour by a 4-3 majority of judges.
The court also ruled the South African runner was denied an “effective remedy” against that discrimination when the Court of Arbitration for Sport and Switzerland’s supreme court denied her two previous appeals against the rules.
It was not immediately clear if the ruling would force an immediate rollback of the rules and if the 32-year-old Semenya would be allowed to compete at next year’s Olympics in Paris.
She was the 2012 and 2016 Olympic champion in the 800 metres but has been barred from running in that event since 2019 by the testosterone rules and was allowed to defend her title at the Tokyo Olympics.
with AP