IAAF meets over gender definition

World track and field’s governing body will begin the process of agreeing the definition of a woman in an athletics context next week as it prepares to reveal the results of South African runner Caster Semenya’s gender tests.

The IAAF’s medical commission, which begins meeting on Friday, could take a year to deliver that definition, general secretary Pierre Weiss said.

“We are obliged to react. It would have been better if we had been prepared to, but we were not prepared,” Weiss told the Associated Press on Saturday.

“We will get a reply in the next 12 months—I don’t expect anything to come out before. There is no definition, but it is the same in other sports—football, swimming, cycling. They don’t have a definition.

“We were in Copenhagen [at the International Olympic Committee meetings] and I asked my colleagues from other sports if they had a definition and nobody has one. But nobody [else] has had the
problem so far.”

Weiss expects the IOC medical commission to consider the same issue in November in Lausanne.

Semenya won the 800m at the Berlin world championships in August. Before the final, the IAAF announced it had ordered gender tests but those results are not ready yet.

“They are being analysed worldwide by experts,” Weiss said. “We will promote the outcome of this case as soon as it is known. The plan is to make a declaration at the latest during our council meeting in November.” - AFP