Semenya Criticizes IOC Chief Coventry After Transgender Athletes Ban

Two-time Olympic champion runner Caster Semenya on Sunday expressed her disappointment with International Committee President Kirsty Coventry over the decision to ban transgender athletes from competing at the Olympics.

Semenya, who is South African, said she expected more from a woman leader like Coventry, who is from Zimbabwe and a fellow African.

“Personally, for her as a leader, she’s an African, I’m sure she understands how, you know, we as Africans, we are coming from, as a global South, you know, you cannot control genetics,” Semenya said at a press conference after a women’s race promoted to celebrate female strength, unity and community support in Cape Town. “For me personally, for her being a woman coming from Africa, knowing how, you know, African women or women in the global South are affected by that.”

Semenya spoke three days after the International Olympic Committee excluded transgender women athletes from competing in women’s events at the Olympics or any IOC event. The decision published in a 10-page policy document Thursday also restricts female athletes such as Semenya with medical conditions known as differences in sex development, or DSD.

“Obviously if you say the science, because we talk about science here, if the science is clear, show us who decided and don’t dress that as a lie because it’s a lie and we know because we’ve seen it so if we were to answer or confront Kirsty that’s how we gonna respond and we’ll respond strong as we are because it affects women,” Semenya said.

Semenya, who was assigned female at birth in South Africa and has testosterone levels higher than the typical female range, is a two-time Olympic gold medalist in the 800 meters who has been banned from running in her favorite race at major international meets like the Olympics and world championships since 2019 because she refused to follow the rules and take medication to artificially reduce her hormone levels.

“For me personally, I’ll say the voice is not heard because you taking it as a tick box, you ticking a box so you can go clarify or say yes we’ve consulted,” she said. “For me, it’s you ticking the box.”

Semenya and other track athletes, such as Dutee Chand of India, challenged previous versions of their sport’s eligibility rules in court.

Before the 2024 Paris Olympics, three top-tier sports — track and field, swimming and cycling — excluded transgender women who had been through male puberty. Semenya won a European Court of Human Rights judgment in her years-long legal challenge to track and field’s rules that did not overturn them.

Last year, though, she claimed to have ended her seven-year legal challenge against sex eligibility rules despite that legal victory.

The eligibility policy that will apply from the Los Angeles Olympics in July 2028 “protects fairness, safety and integrity in the female category,” the IOC said Thursday.

It is unclear how many, if any, transgender women are competing at an Olympic level. No woman who transitioned from being born male competed at the 2024 Paris Summer Games, though weightlifter Laurel Hubbard did at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 without winning a medal.

The IOC said last week’s decision was not retroactive and did not apply to any grassroots or recreational sports programs. The IOC’s Olympic Charter states that access to play sport is a human right.