Cas tried to provide a clear verdict on Caster Semenya but left a tangled mess | Andy Bull

The court of arbitration for sport may have come down on one side of the debate over the athlete but its ruling contained enough holes and caveats to mean the dispute will continue

The crux of the Caster Semenya ruling, the line that cuts a path through the thicket of conflicting arguments and contrary opinions, is buried midway through the sixth paragraph of the summary of the verdict. It all turns on one little word – “but”. The paragraph explains that the court of arbitration for sport’s three-person panel found that the IAAF’s regulations requiring Semenya and other middle distance runners with Differences of Sex Development (DSDs) to lower their naturally high levels of testosterone are “discriminatory” but that “such discrimination is a necessary, reasonable and proportionate means of achieving the IAAF’s aim of preserving the integrity of female athletics”.

Cas has not only decided that the rights of the majority of female athletes outweigh the rights of the minority among them with DSDs, it has also decided that the IAAF is justified in discriminating against that minority because it protects the interests of the larger group. Semenya, then, and an unknown number of other runners with DSDs who want to compete between 400m and a mile will now have to take oral contraceptives to bring their testosterone levels down below the IAAF’s threshold of five nmol/L, closer to the range of a typical female athlete. Sports scientists estimate it will cost her around seven seconds over 800m, the difference between finishing first and last in the 2016 Olympic final.

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