TEL AVI – Retired American track and field star Carl Lewis has blamed South African athletics authorities for the predicament of the nation’s world champion Caster Semenya, whom a report says is a hermaphrodite.
The IAAF, athletics’ world governing body, said last week medical experts were examining the results of gender tests on Semenya, who won the women’s 800 metres at last month’s world championships in Berlin.No decision is expected until late November but the IAAF has declined to confirm a report last week in Australia’s Daily Telegraph newspaper which said the runner had both male and female sexual characteristics.Lewis said he was upset by the handling of the affair.’Here is an 18-year-old young woman, because that’s what she feels she is, let down every step along the way… the South African federation should have dealt with it and I think the federation let her down,’ Lewis said on a visit to Tel Aviv on Monday.- Nampa-Reuters
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