Semenya, a two-time Olympic champion (2008 and 2012) and three-time world champion in the 800m but deprived of her favorite race because she refuses hormone treatment to lower her testosterone levels, won a legal battle in the Strasbourg-based court on Tuesday. She had seized it after the Swiss justice had confirmed in 2020 a decision of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) validating a regulation of the International Federation of Athletics (World Athletics) that limits the participation in competitions of hyperandrogenic athletes.

Semenya, who has a natural excess of male sex hormones and has been engaged in a showdown with World Athletics for more than a decade, described the ECHR decision in a statement as "significant" because "calling into question the future of all similar rules".

However, this ruling does not invalidate the rules of the International Federation of Athletics and does not directly pave the way for Semenya to be reinstated in the 800m without hormone treatment.

World Athletics even tightened its regulations in March for hyperandrogenic athletes, who must now keep their testosterone levels below 2.5 nanomoles per liter for 24 months (instead of 5 nanomoles for six months) to compete in the women's category, regardless of distance.

"My hope is that World Athletics, and beyond all sports organisations, will take into account the decision of the ECHR and ensure that the dignity and human rights of athletes are respected," Semenya stressed.

New episodes to come?

"As the world governing body for athletics, we must and do take into account the human rights of all our athletes," the international federation said in a statement.

"Sports regulations, by their nature, limit people's rights. When these rights are at stake, it is our responsibility to decide whether this restriction is justified by the purpose, which is, in this case, to protect women's sport," she said.

The sportivo-judicial soap opera around the emblematic case of Semenya could know other episodes.

The decision of the ECHR in favor of Semenya, thus reinforced in her fight, "potentially opens the way to a new procedure before the CAS" of the South African athlete against the new regulations even more restrictive of World Athletics, says to AFP Antoine Duval, specialist in sports law at the Asser Institute in The Hague.

"It remains to be seen whether Caster Semenya will have enough financial resources, strength and will to continue her struggle," he said.

On Tuesday, World Athletics had indicated that it would "encourage the Swiss authorities to turn to the Grand Chamber" of the ECHR, its supreme formation that officiates as a court of appeal and renders final decisions, highlighting the "dissenting opinions" in its decision, rendered with a narrow majority of four judges to three.

In detail, the ECHR found that Switzerland had violated Article 14 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, on the prohibition of discrimination, taken in conjunction with Article 8, which protects the right to respect for private life.

Semenya's last races, a 5,000m and a 10,000m in a South African competition, were in early March.

© 2023 AFP