Prosecutors said, on Wednesday, Olympic champion Caster Semenya was sentenced to 50 hours of community service for speeding while driving in South Africa. The athlete was arrested last Thursday and released on $35 bail, according to a statement sent to The Associated Press by the National Prosecuting Authority.
According to the NPA, Semenya appeared in court in Pretoria on Friday and pleaded guilty to the charge. She will appear in court again in August, where prosecutors will report on whether or not she completed her community service.
Semenya, 30, is a two-time Olympic and three-time world 800m champion whose career has been derailed by controversial laws governing the normal level of testosterone in female athletes. World Athletics will not allow Semenya or other women with equally elevated levels of natural testosterone to participate in major international competitions ranging from 400 meters to one mile until they choose to artificially lower their hormone levels to below a certain threshold.
According to WA, their high levels of natural testosterone provide them with an unfair advantage over other female athletes. Semenya has failed to obey the rules and has lost two judicial challenges against them, the first in 2019 at Switzerland’s highest court and the second in 2020 at the Swiss Supreme Court. Her attorneys declared in February that she would take her battle against the unjust laws to the European Court of Human Rights.
This is seen as a last-ditch court appeal, and a hearing is impossible before the Tokyo Olympics begin in July, ensuring Semenya will almost definitely be unable to defend her title. Semenya hasn’t participated in a top-level 800m event in two years.
She has increasingly shifted to unfamiliar long-distance sports, but with modest results. She took the 5,000 meters at the South African nationals last month, but her time fell well short of the Olympic qualification standard.
At those championships, Semenya said that she could try again to qualify for the Olympics in the 5,000, but that “if not, it’s not the end of the world, man”.
