Do we like Caster Semenya?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Years of costly court fights, a foundation backing schoolgirls and no harmful words found; held back only because the record we could open is thinner on wider causes.
Semenya is a two-time Olympic 800-metre champion from South Africa, and for most of the last decade she's been better known for a fight in the courtroom than on the track. The fight was over sport's sex-eligibility rules, which kept her out of her own event. She has said it was about principle rather than her own career.
Here's how that fight went. The Court of Arbitration for Sport agreed in 2019 that World Athletics' rules were discriminatory but upheld them in the name of fair competition, and the Swiss Federal Supreme Court backed that call. In July 2025 the European Court of Human Rights ruled 15-2 that she hadn't had a rigorous enough hearing in Switzerland. It left the rules themselves untouched, so it was a partial win.
In October 2025 her lawyer told the AP the case had “reached the highest possible court with a highly successful outcome” and wouldn't go further. So after seven years she walked away from the courts, with the rules still standing. That's a long, expensive slog for something that was never going to put her back on the start line.
On the harm check, we found nothing nasty from her: no slide into grievance, no conspiracy theories, no culture-war grifting. Her sharpest words in 2026 were aimed at the IOC, saying of its new policy “Of course it causes harm.” The IOC says the policy protects fairness, and Coventry says it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category. Where you land depends on whether you read it as fairness or exclusion, but Semenya's stance here is plainly on the side of the people being shut out.
She also doesn't just talk. Her foundation handed menstrual cups and sanitary pads to schoolgirls at a village school in Limpopo in 2016, with sports camps planned. In 2018 she was named Sports Star and Sportswoman of the Year at the SA Sport Awards, though she didn't turn up to collect them.
Her own words show a woman who won't be shoved into someone else's box. She has said the rules are not about levelling the playing field but about getting certain women off it entirely. That's her view of her own case, and the court record shows the other side, World Athletics, says its rules protect fairness.