The double Olympic 800m champion was awarded £69,000/€80,000 in damages but she is still unable to compete over two laps
Caster Semenya has won a partial victory at the European Court of Human Rights (July 10) in her ongoing seven-year legal battle against World Athletics’ sex eligibility rules.
The Grand Chamber of the ECHR ruled 15-2 that the 34-year-old’s rights under Article 6 – the right to a fair hearing – had been violated by Switzerland’s Supreme Court, where Semenya was appealing a ruling from Court of Arbitration for Sport which found in favour of World Athletics.
The South African, who secured Olympic 800m gold medals at both London 2012 and Rio 2016, was born with differences of sexual development and hasn’t competed over two laps since World Athletics restricted testosterone levels from 400m up to the mile.
The current rules for DSD athletes require them to reduce their testosterone levels to 2.5n/mol for at least six months to compete in any female category event internationally. World Athletics argue the rules are needed to ensure fair competition and to protect the female category.
Four years after Semenya unsuccessfully challenged World Athletics at the Switzerland-based CAS in 2019, the lower chamber of the ECHR stated her rights had been violated by the Swiss government because “it had failed to provide sufficient safeguards for her complaint to be examined effectively”.
As a result, the Swiss government referred the case to the Grand Chamber. Although Europe’s top court dismissed the other aspects of the appeal filed by Semenya – Articles 8 (right to respect for private life), 13 (right to an effective remedy) and 14 (prohibition of discrimination) – she was awarded £69,000/€80,000 in damages.
The ECHR ruling cannot be appealed, meaning the case returns to the Swiss federal courts. As it solely concerns the Swiss government, this ruling from the ECHR does not impact/overturn World Athletics’ rules on DSD athletes.
Semenya has competed sporadically – she represented South Africa in the relay at the 2023 World Athletics Cross Country Championships in Bathurst – over the last couple of years and has now gone into coaching.
The South African is also a triple world and double Commonwealth champion and has claimed an incredible 21 victories on the Diamond League circuit.
