Athlete Defends Herself – level 3

28-02-2019 07:00

Caster Semenya is a female athlete from South Africa, and she has taken the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) to court because it wants to force her to take medication to lower her testosterone.

The secretary for the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) said that the hearing will take one week which is unusually long.

People questioned Semenya’s gender as a woman after she won the World Championship in 2009, and the IAAF wants to ensure that all female athletes have similar testosterone levels. The IAAF president said that the rules are there to help female athletes have fair competitions.

The court will decide Semenya’s future as an athlete and others like her next month.

Difficult words: testosterone (a chemical in the body that all people have, but men have more of it than women; testosterone helps you be strong and fast); hearing (when people go to a court so the law can help them make a decision), gender (males or females).

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