Semenya switches to 200 to be able to turn up in Tokyo
Female atheletes are banned from running middle distances at top-level meets unless harmone levels are within permissible limits
Pretoria: Caster Semenya just won't go away.
Banned from competing in her favorite race and defending her title, the Olympic 800-meter champion is aiming to show up at the Tokyo Games anyway -- by switching to the 200 meters.
Semenya announced her decision to officially change events to the 200 on her Instagram account on Friday, saying her desire "to compete at the highest level of sport'' drove her to try and qualify for the Olympics in a race she's unfamiliar with.
"This decision has not been an easy one but, as always, I look forward to the challenge and will work hard, doing all I can to qualify for Tokyo and compete to the best of my ability for South Africa," she said.
Under the world track and field body's highly criticized testosterone regulations, Semenya and other female athletes with high natural testosterone are barred from races from 400 meters to one mile at top-level meets like the Olympics and world championships unless they undergo treatment to reduce their hormone levels for six months prior to running.
Semenya has refused to do so, calling the rules and the medical intervention required unfair and unethical. Athletes are given three choices to lower their testosterone: Birth control pills, hormone-blocking injections or surgery.
But the regulations don't apply to the 200 meters and that gives Semenya a chance to run at her third Olympics, even if it's not in the race she wants to run in.
It won't be easy.
Semenya has rarely run the 200 meters, and only at lower-level events. She didn't compete at all over the distance between between 2016 and early 2019 and she is well off the pace of the world's leading women.
The 29-year-old South African needs to improve her personal best by nearly two seconds just to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics. Her best is 24.26 seconds, in South Africa in February 2019. The Olympic qualifying standard for the women's 200 is 22.80 seconds. Semenya's PB wouldn't have got her out of the heats at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.