Caster Semenya will not be able to defend her Olympic gold 800m title in Tokyo next year after losing an appeal about her testosterone levels.
The ruling comes despite the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights saying sporting bodies should remove regulations for women athletes that make it harder for intersex and trans sportspeople to compete.
South African runner Semenya is the most famous case. The 800-meters Olympic champion has the intersex condition hyperandrogenism, which causes higher testosterone levels.
In particular she has both X and Y chromosomes, as do most men, while women typically only have X chromosomes. Under rules from World Athletics, athletes with ‘differences of sexual development’ (DSD) can’t compete on distances of