The ruling on Caster Semenya is a common sense compromise

Was the Caster Semenya ruling fair? It’s an emotional case that has sparked debate across the world. Born with a disorder of sex development (DSD), the South African runner was raised female and has never thought of herself as anything else. But on Wednesday, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled to uphold the International Association of Athletics Federation’s (IAAF) regulations for female athletes with DSDs. In order to compete in the women’s category, the court decided, Semenya must take drugs to lower her testosterone levels.

Whichever way you look it – and there are a lot of ways of looking at it – it’s a no-win situation. Sports is divided into two divisions, male and female, to reflect the two sex categories that most of us fall neatly into. For a small number of people, however, this binary is less straightforward.

Though the two-time Olympic champion at 800m has never disclosed the results of her sex tests, the CAS statement made clear that she has 46XY DSD: i.e.