On athletics: Season opens for business but gender debate keeps running

You know the Olympics are getting close when Usain Bolt pops up on TV, live from Ostrava, all guns blazing. No athlete declares the season open for business better than the big man from Jamaica, and, like Atlas carrying the sport on his shoulders, Bolt must realise the burden of it all too.

So, there was more than just a tingle of expectation about his appearance at the Golden Spike meeting in the Czech Republic last night. And winning too, in 9.99 seconds. Now more than ever, the sport needs Bolt, not just for his times on the track but the way he carries himself off it.

“I’m not worried, I’m too fast, they can’t catch me,” Bolt told USA Today, when asked how the mosquito-borne Zika virus might impact on the Rio Olympics – brilliantly diffusing some of the concern around that issue. It may be purely coincidence or else entirely fitting that Bolt will celebrate his 30th birthday on the day of the closing ceremony in Rio, the age when the sprinter’s handbrake will naturally start to stick; either way, athletics will soon be facing into a life without Bolt.

Will we ever see his likes again? Some people still have a hard time believing in any world record-breaker in the 100 metres, and for good reason given the history of doping in the event. What has at least set Bolt apart is this universal recognition of him being some sort of “genetic freak” – whatever that exactly means.

Open for business

Which naturally brings me to Caster Semenya: no athlete has so far declared their season open for business better than the now 25-year-old. At last month’s South African championships, in Stellenbosch, she produced an unprecedented hat-trick – winning the 400m in 50.78 and the 800m in 1:58.54, both world-leading times for 2016, before winning the 1,500m, all within the space of four hours. It wasn’t the almost half-hearted effort of Semenya’s victories which raised plenty of eyebrows as much as her exceptionally lean yet strong appearance.

Semenya followed that with another 800m victory at the opening Diamond League meeting in Doha. There, after toying with the field, she ran the last 100m in 13.6 seconds, winning in 1:58.26. No woman in the history of 800m running has run the last 100m faster than 13.6, at least not when going sub-two minutes in the process.

Tomorrow, Semenya will race again over 800m in Rabat, Morocco – the first Diamond League meeting to be staged in Africa. She may not be in the mood just yet to take down the world record of 1:53.28, which has stood since 1983 to Jarmila Kratochvilova of the former Czechoslovakia, although based on her opening performances of 2016 that’s surely just a matter of time. Only Bolt himself currently rivals her status as such irresistible gold medal favourite for Rio.

The problem for Semenya is that in so boldly declaring her business for the season she’s also reopened that slippery grey sporting gender debate – also known as the either/or debate, or simply the is she/is he debate.

Of course she’s reopened it before, at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, when she arrived from the proverbial nowhere to win the women’s 800m in a stunning 1:55.45. Aged just 18, it was even less about the effort then as it was her appearance.

Only this time, it seems even less black and white. Some people, including her coach Jean Verster, have put her return to 2009 form down to simple lifestyle factors, a sort of older, happier Semenya. Last December, she married long-term partner Violet Raseboya, although that was no big deal in South Africa, who legalised same-sex marriage back in 2006, the fifth country in the world to do so (for anyone who still thinks we’re so fabulously progressive).

Gender testing

Still, the backdrop to all this raises a far bigger question over Semenya’s return to form. After 2009, for better or for worse, the IAAF found themselves defending leaked reports of gender testing on Semenya, which revealed she had no womb or ovaries but internal testes and high levels of testosterone, an almost certain advantage. With that the IAAF introduced a sort of testosterone limit for women athletes, requiring those over it to lower their levels with hormone treatment.

Easier said than done, however, as the IAAF essentially faced the question no one has ever been able to answer: what is the ultimate difference between a man and a woman?

No wonder it was soon challenged, and, last July, Indian sprinter Dutee Chand won her case at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), who agreed with Chand’s lawyers that her high testosterone levels were entirely natural, and that the IAAF rule was discriminatory against women, given men don’t require testosterone testing; nor indeed are naturally tall basketball players – either male or female – considered to have an unfair advantage.

So the IAAF rule was suspended for two years – a “slightly surprising” decision, according to its president, Seb Coe. In some ways its challenge now is not just in deciding what deviates from the standard definition of male and female, especially as the science keeps suggesting how much potential blending there is; the real challenge now is deciding which athletes qualify as a “genetic freak” – and whatever that exactly means.