Caster Semenya threatens further action after blistering response in Doha Diamond League

The world’s most controversial female athlete Caster Semenya has announced her determination to defy her landmark IAAF ban.

Caster Semenya is refusing to quit athletics despite running her last 800m race.

South Africa’s two-time Olympic champion must take testosterone-suppressing drugs regularly next week if she wants to compete at international level, The Sun reports.

The 28-year-old refuses to take the medication after losing the landmark case with the IAAF.

And she showed her dominance of the sport last night by comfortably winning the Doha Diamond League meeting.

Her world leading mark of 1:54.98 was the eighth fastest time in history and was her 30th consecutive 800m victory.

Semenya said: “I keep training. I keep running. It doesn’t matter if something comes in front of me, like I said I always find a way.”

Speaking to the BBC, she added: “I’m never going anywhere. At the end of the day, it’s all about believing. It’s up to God.

“God has decided my career and he will end my career so no human can stop me from running. I understand there’s been a lot of controversy but that does not control anything.”

Daylight second.

Semenya has been the world’s most controversial female athlete since it was first revealed she was subjected to gender testing in 2009.

While the results were never made public, it is understood that Semenya, who burst onto the scene when she won the first of her three world crowns in that year, has both male and female characteristics.

Despite the findings, Semenya continued to compete, retaining her world title in 2011, winning Olympic gold at London 2012, winning again in Rio four years later and recapturing the world title back in London two years ago.

But Semenya found herself involved in a legal case when the IAAF brought in new rules demanding runners “with differences of sexual development” lower their testosterone levels if they wanted to compete as women in races from 400m to one mile.

IAAF-commissioned research in 2017 found that female athletes with elevated testosterone levels had a competitive advantage of up to three per cent over other runners.

— This story originally appeared on thesun.co.uk and has been republished with permission

Originally published as Caster Semenya threatens further action after blistering response in Doha Diamond League