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IAAF president Sebastian Coe illustrated once again that, as much as he claims to be driving fairness in women’s track and field competitions, he has little regard for Caster Semenya.
This week, Coe unashamedly admitted to CNN World Sport anchor Amanda Davies that he hadn’t spoken to Semenya directly, despite the high-profile nature of the case.
Just how Coe was seconded for another term in world athletics’ highest office boggles the mind as he has failed dismally in handling a basic human rights issue.
The Brit will this week stand for re-election unopposed, meaning that African athletes will continue to be at the mercy of his policies, which trample over their dignity.
Some of his prohibitive policies are hidden behind science designed to bar athletes such as Semenya from competing.
It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out who has been most affected by the IAAF regulations going into the World Athletics Championships in Doha.
All of the 800m women’s champions from South Africa, Kenya and Burundi (Semenya, Margaret Wambui and Francine Niyonsaba, respectively) have been deprived of a chance to potentially add another global medal to their collections.
A lot has been written about the Semenya-IAAF legal battle, but the most common conclusion around the debate has been in favour of the athlete.
Patricia Palacios Zuloaga, a lecturer at the University of Essex School of Law in England, ranks among the brave individuals in influential positions who incisively unpacked the complex topic.
Like some of us, Zuloaga was one of the first few people who sensed that the IAAF’s rules on gender eligibility were nothing less than a targeted strike against Semenya.
Often, we always plead for Africans to tell their own stories. Zuloaga is not African, but she nailed it in her interpretation of an African story through her opinion piece that was published on her blog in May last year.
She wrote that, “we cannot understand this situation without taking into account that Caster Semenya, undoubtedly the public face of hyperandrogenism in women’s athletics, is a black African woman”.
Online Reporter
derick.khumalo