Poor Semenya

[RumNotRun]

https://news.sky.com/story/if-women-must-stop-competing-so-be-it-semenyas-rallying-cry-over-olympics-transgender-athlete-ban-13525463

He's fighting for women's dignity apparently. The article says nothing about the children he's fathered, whilst being a woman of course.

And the women are punished over and over…they are punished by losing our on medals and finding and they are condemned as poor losers if they try and speak out about the unfairness.

Since the DSD athletes first got kicked out, there have been some brilliant African women who've been amongst the very best in the world at the 800m, challenging & often beating Keely Hodgkinson and rest.

World championship golds were won by a Ugandan in 2018, A Kenyan in 2023, another Kenyan in 2025. All of them very much women.

How many of these golds for African women [and also I assume sponsorship, state funding, coaching, etc] would have been possible if DSD males had still been allowed to run? With presumably limited resources there'd have been a clear temptation to focus on the safer bets/ more obviously strong prospects.

Well exactly. Every 800 metres world champion since Semenya has been black, and the one American was of South Sudanese descent. In the other middle disance event, Faith Kipyegon from Kenya has won every 1500 metres title since then all by herself! These black women seem to matter much less to some people than the ones with Y chromosomes do. Weird that.

Faith Kipyegon - a useful picture below for those who claim it's the 'typically African features' of the DSD athletes that are being unfairly/racistly called out. This btw is a 1500m podium, ie a distance that's a bit too long for a very heavy, muscular runner like CS.

There used to be a poster on here a while ago who identified as a police person. His catch phrase was "We just don't know".
This thread reminds me of that poster.

Me too

Quite.
It could be argued that the first people to have lost out to Semenya, Wambui & Niyonsaba etc. are the female athletes from the same nations. Their careers will have been negatively impacted at an earlier stage than athletes from competing nations. And should they protest, on top of the vitriol aimed at any female athlete speaking out on this, they will have the added problem of having to effectively go against their own sporting governing body, which will cause a whole other set of problems for them. These (in all likelihood black women) seem to be invisible to those who argue that the new regulations are just racist pandering to 'white women's tears'.

Weird isn’t it - you’d think ‘intersectional feminists’ would be all over the injustice to these black women.
But no - men who (for whatever reason, and of whatever colour) claim to be men are inexplicably prioritised.

I wonder what happened to him because currently we just don't know!

I remember him. I think he fell silent after the Supreme Court case showed our interpretation of the Equality act was 100% correct. All his disingenuous arguments disappeared in a puff of smoke.

It seems that I grossly underestimated the number of DSD athletes who have competed at World/Olympic final standard in the women's category. I had heard of - Caster Semenya, Francine Niyonsaba, Margaret Wambui, Christine Mboma, Beatrice Masilingi, Annett Negesa, Dutee Chand and Maximila Imali. It would appear that there were over sixty of these athletes competing from the year 2000.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/sep/19/sex-tests-brought-in-after-data-showed-50-60-dsd-athletes-in-finals-world-athletics-says

a lot are targeted specifically, it’s lucrative and massively increases winning odds

I have to give a shout for Keely Hodgkinson, who won Olympic gold in the 800m at Paris in 2024 and is the current indoor World champion and World Record holder at 800m and is also the indoor World Record holder at 600m.

I have been saying that for some time and have been called out as racist on some forums. Both Mboma and Masilingi have the same coach who "discovered" them.
I imagine it must be quite lucrative to be coaching two athletes such as these.

Oh Gods! No one say his name twice more, it could be a Beetlejuice scenario we're dealing with here. We just don't know! 😂

This. Why should a poor country put funds into grassroots womens sports , and support young females athletes financially through many years of training in the hope that they improve and are resilient enough to work their way up through national and international rankings, compete against other elite athletes through several rounds of competition and then be fortunate enough on the day to get a good start and win a medal, when it is so much more effective to be on the look out for young DSD athletes who are almost guaranteed to be able to beat elite female athletes and hardly break into a muck sweat.

It is not just the female athletes beaten on the day who miss out. It is the potential female athletes who don’t even get grassroots support and who are denied opportunity because the infrastructure to develop them just doesnt exist.

Rather insensitive mentioning Beetlejuice to Boiled!

That reminds me that about 20 years ago I had a cryptorchid dog (Teddy) and a cryptorchid cat (Hector) at the same time. The vet seemed a little afraid I might put a spell on him.

Very sweet animals, but castrating them was a challenge; however I was a advised that it was advisable despite their other condition.

I la la la'd over that bit!

Absolutely. I was watching a YouTube video from a US creator who was predicting that Keely will break the outdoor world record this year. 🤞🏼 that he is correct.

Switching to football appears lucrative.
Barbra Banda, Tabitha and Temwa Chawinga.

Indeed, and as the Olympics is of little real interest to FIFA compared to world cups etc, I don't see them adopting the same policy.

That would be amazing. She is on fire at the moment. That photo of our 3 gold women athletes at the World Athletics Indoor Championships makes me smile every time I look at it. UK women’s athletics is where cycling was a few years back. We have some phenomenal athletes in the squad.

There really aren’t enough eye rolls for this piece in Time magazine:

https://time.com/article/2026/04/01/caster-semenya-the-ioc-s-ruling-is-a-disgrace/

At least Semenya gets one thing right:

I hoped that our shared home continent would open her [Kirsty Coventry] eyes to the fact that this policy will disproportionately impact women from the global South.

Indeed it will - women will get the opportunities denied to them over the last couple of decades by the likes of Semenya, Wambui, Masilingi, Mboma, Niyonsaba etc.

If Semenya has 2 and a half million quid. The one thing he is not, is poor.

It doesn't matter how many 'sad face' articles he does, the new policy is in place and no male with a DSD should take the place of a biological woman (sportswoman) now.

Sabrina is quite right, the women who have been affected the most are the women from their own nations who were not selected, as a DSD male was chosen instead.