The IAAF has responded to the news that Caster Semenya has filed an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport against their new ruling on female classification.
“We await further information and stand ready to defend the new regulations which were introduced to address the following issue in athletics,” said the IAAF in a press release.
The IAAF’s rules concern the events from 400m to the mile, in which the IAAF maintains an advantage is held by female athletes with hyperandrogenism.
The IAAF’s press release continued: “The evidence gathered by the experts consulted by the IAAF (both peer-reviewed research and observational data from the field) suggests that having levels of circulating testosterone in the normal male range rather than in the normal female range, and being androgen-sensitive gives a female DSD athlete a performance advantage of at least 5-6% over a female athlete with testosterone levels in the normal female range (which is an enormous difference in events where milliseconds count).
The effects are most clearly seen in races over distances between 400m and one mile, where the combination of increased lean body mass and elevated circulating haemoglobin appears to have the greatest combined impact.”
