Caster Semenya offered to show officials her genitalia to prove she was female

Caster Semenya has made explosive allegations about the obstacles she’s faced while forging a professional athletics career covered in controversy.

Track star Caster Semenya said she once offered to show athletics officials her vagina to prove she was female.

Speaking in an interview with HBO’s Real Sports, she also accused athletics chiefs of making her take medication that “tortured” her, as the South African found herself in the middle of a complicated storm sparked by doubts about her gender.

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Semenya — who has one of several conditions known as differences of sex development (DSD) — said she offered to show World Athletics officials her genitalia after winning the 800m world title as a teenager in Berlin in 2009.

“They thought I had a d***, probably,” Semenya reportedly told HBO. “I told them, ‘It’s fine. I’m a female, I don’t care. If you want to see I’m a woman, I will show you my vagina. All right?’”

Following her commanding victory, the sport’s governing body ordered Semenya to undergo testing and it was revealed she had been born with internal testes. In order to continue competing, the middle distance specialist was told to take medication that lowered her testosterone levels.

“It made me sick, made me gain weight, panic attacks, I don’t know if I was ever going to have a heart attack,” Semenya said.

“It’s like stabbing yourself with a knife every day. But I had no choice.

“I’m 18, I want to run, I want to make it to (the) Olympics, that’s the only option for me. But I had to make it work.”

Caster Semenya has been at the centre of a complicated debate. Picture: Karim Jaafar/AFP

World Athletics lawyer Jonathan Taylor told HBO Real Sports there was nothing unhealthy about the medication Semenya took.

“You say, medically, it’s not healthy for me, then my question back to you is: ‘Why do the world’s leading experts say that that is what we would prescribe?’” Taylor said.

Semenya responded to that by saying: “Jonathan must cut his tongue and throw it away. If he wants to understand how that thing has tortured me, he must go and take those medications. He will understand.”

Semenya’s win in Berlin 13 years ago was the catalyst for a long and at-times ugly debate about Semenya’s place within elite sport. She won two more world championship titles and also claimed two Olympic gold medals in London and Rio — all in her pet 800m event.

However, restrictions were later put in place that limited her ability to compete because she chose not to undergo procedures or take further medication to lower her testosterone level.

In February last year it was revealed Semenya, who was born female and identified as female for her entire life, was going to the European Court of Human Rights to fight a ruling that prevents her from competing in middle distance races because of her naturally occurring, high testosterone level.

She has not competed since 2019.