Caster Semenya of South Africa won the Women senior 800m final during the 2016 CAA 20th African Senior Championships at the Kings Park Athletic stadium in Durban, South Africa on June 26, 2016
Caster Semenya might be the latest athlete to undergo scrutiny surrounding her gender in the Olympics but there have been many athletes whose genders were questioned.
Here is a look at nine other athletes who underwent numerous gender tests and public scrutiny surrounding their gender.
Dutee Chand
Indian athlete Chand‚ who has just represented her country in the 2016 Rio Olympics is hailed as one of the bravest alleged intersex athletes in the Olympics. Chand challenged the IAAF’s ruling at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and won after she was barred from competing in 2014 due to high testesterone levels in her body.
Pinki Pramanik
Another Indian female track runner was found to be ‘male pseudo-hermophrodite’ in 2012 after she won a silver medal for her country as part of the 400-metre women’s relay team at the 2006 Commonwealth Games.
Ewa Klobukowska
Polish-born Klobukowska was disqualified from qualifying in the women’s events in 1968 after the IAAF introduced sex chromatin testing for gender identification in an attempt to quash name-calling and rumour-mongering.
Stella Walsh
The 100m gold medalist‚ who was also Polish‚ went on to set 26 new world records. It was after her death in 1980 that it was found that Walsh had ambiguous genitalia caused by a rare disorder known as chromosomal mosaicism.
Maria Patino
Spain’s Patino had already been certified to compete as a woman at the World Track and Field Championships in 1983‚ but she forgot to take the certification with her to the World University Games in Japan in 1985. After submitting to a swab test Patino failed the gender test and was officially classified as “male”.
Santi Soundarajan
Indian middle distance runner Soundarajan was dismissed from the games a day after she won silver for her performance in the women’s 800m at the Asian Athletics Championships in South Korea in 2005 for failing gender verification tests.
Erika Schinegger
Schinegger a gold medalist in the women’s downhill at the Alpine World Ski Championships in Portillo‚ Chile‚ in 1966 underwent testing at the 1968 Winter Olympics at Grenoble‚ France. It was discovered that her saliva contained only male hormones.
Dora Ratjen
Ratjen went on to win gold for Germany at the European Athletics Championships in Vienna in 1938. On her way home from the Olympics she was arrested in Magdeburg and charged with fraud as it was believed she was a man. Her gold medal was confiscated. Zdenka Koubkova
In 1934‚ Koubkova‚ a Czechoslovakian track-and-field athlete‚ became the subject of rumours when she declined to participate in a medical examination that was part of a scientific study on the effects of athletics on women’s bodies. Soon afterward‚ reports that the 800 metre runner was pseudo-hermaphrodite surfaced.
Edinanci Fernandes da Silva
The Brazilian judoka (female judo wrestler)‚ was born with both male and female sex organs. She underwent surgery in the mid-1990s to officially compete as a woman and was cleared by the IOC to represent Brazil in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.
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