Blog #11 IMHO #2

Story Link:
http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/news?slug=ap-timdahlberg-112109&prov=ap&type=lgns

In my humble opinion, the Yahoo! Story “The shameful case of Caster Semenya,” is a sad story in its entirety. The story takes a look back at Caster Semenya, a female olympic sprinter who won gold in the 800 meter sprint in the summer olympics in Berlin. From Semenya's emotional win to the public scrutiny placed upon her because of her gender, each key point in her shameful story angered me more and more as I read the rest of the article. After doing research about gender testing in sports, it angers me that individual's confidential information such as medical records are put on full display for all to see.

I believe that Semenya's medical records should have not been dispersed to everyone. She deserves to keep those records for herself and her family. It is truly horrible that just because Semenya ran fast and hard to her gold medal, judges and the olympic committee had to go ahead and scrutinize her victory, saying she may not be a female. This issue in particular lit my fuse in that I watched a video in my kinesiology “100% Woman,” a story about Michelle Dumaresq, a female downhill mountain biker who was once a man. I feel these two stories correlate with each other in several ways in that both were humiliated and brought down by their fellow competitors as well as governing officials. Both Dumaresq and Semenya did not deserve to be humiliated. If anything, both of their issues should have been kept confidential or at least from the public eye.

As a person that stands for fairness and equal opportunity, I believe that both Semenya and Dumaresq deserve the accolades they have achieved thus far. The humiliation they endured by the media was depressing in my opinion. I still can't believe the olympic committee did not handle the situation in a more respectful fashion. Semenya's scandal proves that the olympic committee is flawed, especially when it comes to drug and gender testing. Both forms of testing have seen the likes of stripped medals from sprinters such as Marion Jones.