Chuene Quits IAAF Council over Gender Row Athlete

(ATR) The controversy over South African 800-meter world champion Caster Semenya rumbles on, with the head of the 18-year-old’s national federation standing down from the ruling council of the IAAF.

Semenya ran the world’s fastest time in 2009, 1min 55.45sec, to win the gold in Berlin last week, despite doubts about her gender being expressed by some rivals and the IAAF announcing it would conduct an investigation.

One of the beaten finalists, Italy’s Elisa Piccione, said: “For me, she is not a woman.”

Now Leonard Chuene, the Athletics South Africa (ASA) president, has withdrawn from the IAAF board “for as long as it takes to fight this dreadful case against our young runner.”

Chuene, who has been an IAAF Council member since 1999, said: “I have withdrawn because there is a clear conflict of interest between myself and the way the case is being handled.”

Chuene claimed in an interview with South Africa’s Sunday Times newspaper that his organization was unaware of any questioning of Semenya’s gender, and that his organization had not – and would not – conduct any gender tests on the runner.

Yet sources in Berlin maintain that there was a medical test conducted on Semenya in South Africa, following her performances at last year’s Commonwealth Youth Games and world junior championships.

The confidential report’s findings suggest that Semenya does not have all the sexual organs normally found in a woman.

Current medical opinion is that the absence of male or female organs is not conclusive proof of gender, and areas of genetic testing are also open to debate. It was the IAAF which was the first international sports federation to abandon the old “grope and cough” gender test nearly 20 years ago, mindful then that this is a complex and ambiguous subject.

The new medical tests on Semenya will be undertaken by an endocrinologist, a gynecologist, an internal medicine expert, an expert on gender and a psychologist. The results may not be known for weeks.

Diack Apologizes for Insensitivity

The IAAF had grown increasingly frustrated with the handling of the case by its South African member federations. But on Saturday Lamine Diack, the IAAF president, admitted that more sensitivity should have been shown towards Semenya.

“It should not even have become an issue, if the confidentiality had been respected,” Diack said.

"There was a leak of confidentiality at some point and this lead to some insensitive reactions. It should have not have been an issue at all as to whether the athlete could run.

“We definitely could have done better with the way we handled it but we didn’t – and now we’ll wait for the scientists.”

Diack rejected South African claims that the IAAF was a racist organization.

“It was not a question of racism, as some are saying,” the IOC member Diack said. “I am the president of the IAAF and I am from Senegal.”

The German media has been investigating the case closely, and some reports air further suspicions about the involvement of ASA’s head coach, the former East German, Dr Ekkert Arbeit.

Arbeit was at the center of the former DDR’s systematic program of doping its track athletes in the 1970s and 1980s. More recently, he has been refused national federation jobs in Australia and Britain because of his previous conduct.

Written by Steven DownesFor general comments or questions, click here .