Paul Lewis: Put the fair into fairer sex

The one positive thing that may come out of the Caster Semenya debacle is that world athletics may find a way to prevent such a horror from occurring again.

Semenya is the masculine-looking 18-year-old South African who won the women's 800m world championships in Berlin by a street and was then pitched into the middle of a gender-testing furore.

Athletics' governing body, the IAAF, sought gender tests. That created the mother and father of a stir in South Africa. Outrage was abundant.

Some ninny squealed about starting a "third world war" - oh, that's right, it was their sports minister Makhenkesi Stofile. Another bright spark then got You Magazine to do a makeover on Semenya - where she came out looking all girl, of course.

Athletics South Africa chief Leonard Chuene accused the IAAF of being racist and sexist and the protests coming out of the Republic got so shrill that, at times, only dogs could hear them.

Only later did Chuene admit that the ASA had known all along that Semenya might trigger gender tests because of testing they had done. They didn't tell Semenya and they didn't tell anyone else, either - their hunger for a gold medal obscuring common sense and decency.

Chuene said he had been motivated by trying to protect Semenya's privacy - though how pitching her into a global controversy achieves that is a question of wondrous dimensions. Somehow he kept his job - quite incredible.

The ASA's behaviour in this matter stands as testament to the dark nature of modern sport - the ruthless quest for success; the subjugation of the individual for national pride; the devious instinct to deny and cover up; the sacrificing of a confused 18-year-old girl.

Semenya has been, at all times, a victim. As far as she and her family are concerned, she is female, born and raised. But now that the moronic South African treatment of her has created ripples worldwide, some good may come of it.

Most assume that if Semenya fails a gender test, she will be stripped of her medal and banned from competition.

But this whole wretched business has highlighted a grey area in athletics and, with all the global publicity, has driven the issue into a potentially troublesome legal minefield.

The problem is that we humans do not always fall into distinct male and female categories. Without going into extensive biological explanation, some people are born "inter-sex" - having female form but male chromosomal characteristics to the extent that they would fail a sex test.

That is why, at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, eight women failed such sex tests but were all eventually cleared after they were proven to be "inter-sex". Some women have female form but carry male genes and sometimes have small testicles hidden inside the abdomen. The key question is whether they derive any benefit from this accident of birth.

Unconfirmed media reports say Semenya has testicles inside her abdomen and has about three times as much testosterone as a 'normal' woman. However, many such women lack the male receptors to convert the testosterone to aid performance.

Semenya certainly looks to the naked eye as if she might be able to but appearances cannot be relied upon.

Even if she can use the testosterone, there could still be tricky legal ground to be negotiated. There are no hard and fast rules governing this situation. Cases tend to be dealt with on an individual basis for the very good reason that all individuals are different - even in degrees of inter-sexness.

A smart lawyer could argue that many top sportspeople are at the top of their sport because of the way God made them. Some women have naturally higher levels of testosterone - so it's their good luck if they are at the higher end of the acceptable range. Other athletes have higher-than-normal natural levels of EPO - the hormone which increases oxygen-carrying red blood cells and which is taken by drug cheats.

Shaquille O'Neal has size 23 feet, is 2.16m tall and weighs 147kg. Would he have been a top basketballer if part of his genetic make-up hadn't made him so large? Would Michael Jordan have been a basketball star if his genetic blueprint hadn't enabled him to hang in the air for inordinate amounts of time denied to other human beings? Other sports stars have had abnormally productive heart and lungs.

Would Usain Bolt be an Olympic champion and world record holder if his legs had been 10cm shorter? Florence Griffith-Joyner, the 1988 Olympic sprint champion was accused of gaining her best performances out of a bottle, maybe even contributing to her death at age 39.

Flo-Jo also demonstrated advanced musculature and ran 100m and 200m world records that still stand more than 20 years later - although, having been in the same room with her a couple of times, she did present as all woman.

That's the thing, of course. Semenya's issue involves gender, even though her world championship time was a full two seconds slower than the world record and ranks her only 14th on the all time list.

The IAAF are proceeding cautiously, as all manner of legal precedents and challenges could arise. Somehow, they have to negotiate a course between the likely outcome that Semenya will not be able to race again (her opponents would likely refuse after all this drama); and finding a fair way to prevent this whole thing from happening again.

The IAAF testing involves gynaecologists, endocrinologists, geneticists and physiologists.

That lends itself to legal interpretation and re-interpretation but maybe this episode will help the IAAF set benchmarks for inter-sex competitors that establish whether they can race or not - even if competitors and national athletics organisations have to undertake exhaustive tests ahead of Olympic and world championships.

If not, this whole ugly business will recur and someone like Caster Semenya will be a victim all over again.