The gender divide in sport

South African Caster Semenya has won all three 800m races she’s entered since returning to competition after spending 11 months on the sidelines, but it hasn’t been smooth sailing.

Gender tests revealed the athlete is indeed female, but some of her competitors aren’t convinced.

"Even if she is a female, she’s on the very fringe of the normal athlete female biological composition from what I understand of hormone testing," said Canadian Diane Cummins. "From that perspective, most of us just feel that we are literally running against a man."

Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time an athlete’s gender has come into question. Here is a look at other incidents.

Stella Walsh

One of the highest-profile cases ever was that of Polish-American athlete Stella Walsh. Over her 20-year career, Walsh won two Olympic medals and broke almost a dozen world records.

She became the first woman to ever run the 100-metre race in under 11 seconds in 1930 before winning a gold medal in the event at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, and a silver at the 1936 Berlin Games.

Walsh also competed in the discus, the long jump, and the 200-metre sprint, setting world records in each event during her career. She was inducted into the American Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1975.

Walsh was killed by a stray bullet during an attempted robbery of a department store in Cleveland in 1980, and an autopsy revealed that the athlete had male sex organs.

Further examination determined that Walsh had both male and female chromosomes (a condition called “˜mosaicism’) but she is generally regarded as a gender cheat.

Hermann Ratjen

German athlete Hermann Ratjen disguised himself as a woman to compete in the women’s high jump competition at the Berlin Olympics in 1936.

Ratjen bound his genitals to his body, and raised suspicions with his deep voice and refusal to share shower facilities with other athletes. “˜Dora’ Ratjen finished fourth.

He went on to set a world record in the women’s high jump at the European Championships in 1938, but was examined by doctors after being spotted in a train station with facial hair.

He never competed again. Ratjen later admitted he was a man, claiming the Nazi regime forced him to disguise himself as a woman.

Ewa Klobukowska

The first female athlete to ever fail a gender test was Polish sprinter Ewa Klobukowska, who won two medals at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo and broke the women’s 100-metre world record the following year.

She voluntarily participated and passed an examination in 1966 after the International Amateur Athletics Federation instituted sex testing for female athletes.

But in 1967, the IAAF ordered chromosome tests for European Cup competitors in Kiev, and Klobukowska failed. Doctors said the athlete had “one chromosome too many.”

Although her condition likely did not give her an advantage, she was banned from all competition.

Renee Richards

Renee Richards was born in 1934 as Richard Raskind, and would become the captain of the male tennis team at Yale University.

At the age of 40, Raskind underwent a sex change operation and competed in the professional women’s tennis tour as Renee Richards.

But Richards was banned from competing in the US Open, so she decided to take the issue to court. In 1977, she won the case and was allowed to compete, reaching the finals with her doubles partner Betty Ann Stewart.

Richards played professional tennis until 1981, and coached female tennis star Martina Navratilova for two years.

Santhi Soundarajan

Santhi Soundarajan, a middle-distance runner from India, failed a gender verification test after winning a silver medal in the 800 metres at the 2006 Asia Games in Doha, Qatar.

Soundarajan passed gender tests at the Asian track and field championship in South Korea in 2005 after winning the 800-metre silver medal.

It has been reported that she suffers from androgen insensitivity syndrome, where an individual has female physical characteristics and a male chromosome.

Stripped of her medal and the subject of public humiliation, she attempted suicide in 2007. She now runs her own athletics academy in her hometown of Pudukkottai, India.