Sex and the sprinter
The Ottawa CitizenDecember 6, 2009
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/sports/sprinter/2309225/story.htmlTo understand where Caster Semenya's interminable struggle for self-identity might end, it is necessary to go back to the beginning. Alone amid the scorched savannah of South Africa's Limpopo province, where the physical horizons are endless and the personal ones less so, it becomes possible to see how far she has run already.
In the villages thrown across this timeless terrain, people are used to waiting. With unemployment in northern Limpopo estimated at 80 per cent, young men sit somnolently in the twilight while elders gather up hens and goats around them.
For 17 years, until her breathtaking athletic prowess meant she could no longer be contained here, Semenya was one of their number: a trouser-wearing tomboy spending her days kicking a soccer ball on ground thick with brambles.
