So, now what ?

She can't be disqualified for being a man, but technically she isn't "fully" woman either.

This will take a while I guess.

So sad she and her family are left to deal with this publicly now. If she is disqualified, I'd argue they should put everyone else through the same rigorous testing. Who's to say it hasn't happened before and went honestly undiscovered? The standards have to be the same for everyone.

Nope just the females who kick everyones butt and look kind of mannish.

Isn't the Sun Britian's Tabloid? Find me another source, please...

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2009/09/10/2009-09-10_caster_semenya_.html

I understand that there are rules and stuff to look at this sort of thing. And the costs of these tests are of course WAY too high to have every athlete do them, but the way they handled this is rediculous. If I didn't know any better, I'd have them sue the IAAF, no matter what the outcome.

What they SHOULD have done, is kept it all private. Do the tests, do the investigations, and wait for an outcome, before you destroy the poor girl's life by making all this public.

1. Her life is far far from "ruined". This is obviously not the first time her gender was put in question. I am sure she has faced that her whole life.

Instead of ruining her life, the controversy has made her a celebrity and will guarantee her a tremendous amount of money and various career options.

2. The point is whether there is a unfair advantage to her gender. The point of such test is fairness. If she was a male and that resulted in an advantage to her performance it would be unfair for her to compete. If she was a male, hermaphrodite, or anything and it doesn't give her any advantage then the gender question is moot.

If she was running in the mens' 800m, would she also be DQ'd?

You hear that ladies? The dangly outweighs the cave every time! Even when both are present! Hooah!

I might have slightly exaggerated that point, but you gotta admit, this is pretty bad. I don't actually think there's been lots of times when people questioned her sex or anything. There's much less of a "women should be skinny and pretty and have long hair" attitude in Africa than in the US or Europe, so I highly doubt that's the case.

And now the whole world (if it turns out to be true) knows she's a hermaphrodite. People are mean, and this will definately have a negative effect on her.

At least her town supports her and all, because otherwise it'd be even worse in a smallish village.

The IAAF did not cause this to go public, Athletics SA and the ANC youth league made it public,
Certain test were asked in private before the competition, and then the good old South African goverment turned it into a racial and sexist issue.

Go read up how many women were barred and tested throughout the last couple of years. No one made a whoo hah over any of those.

Where are his/her booooooooobs?

If Caster wants it then I'm sure a career in special interest porn will always be available as a back up to athletics.

This is a pretty harsh way for her to find out she's not solely female.

I really hope she knew this already. Would be pretty rough to have to deal with it in public like this from the start.

I still assume that they know this.