The issues surrounding the gender verification of Caster Semenya have continued to fuel a firestorm of controversy after the 18-year-old's return to South Africa following her victory in the women's 800m at the World Championships in Berlin.
Semenya (stats) stunned the world in July when she won the African junior 800m title in 1:56.72, the fastest time in the world this season and an almost five-second personal-best. That drastic drop in time raised eyebrows worldwide and prompted the sport's global governing body, the International Amateur Athletics Federation, to investigate questions raised about Semenya's gender (read more and more).
In Berlin, Semenya dropped her time further, to 1:55.45 (watch video).
According to a Sept. 1 report in the Mail & Guardian of Johannesburg, tests conducted by Athletics South Africa three years ago found Semenya to have extremely elevated, but legal, testosterone levels.
A separate account in the Daily Telegraph of Australia said those testosterone levels were three-times higher than those found in a "normal" female.
The M&G cited two anonymous sources from within the ASA as saying the national governing body "made sure" Semenya was eligible to compete through a standard urine doping test taken by all athletes. ASA protocol calls for that urine sample to be taken by a person of the same gender who is also authorized to check any irregularities in the athlete's genitalia.
"She was tested three years ago when she started competing and it was found that she is a woman," one source said. "She may have rather high levels of male hormones, but she is definitely a woman."
Chris Hattingh, the chairperson of ASA's anti-doping committee, said that the urine sample taken for a doping test is often used to test the ratio between testosterone and epi-testosterone, a steroid produced naturally by the body but one that can be used to mask an unusually high level of artificial testosterone.
Since the Worlds, Semenya has also been linked to Dr. Ekkart Arbeit, South Africa's head coach with a particularly checkered past.
Arbeit, who was brought in by ASA to boost the country's chances of scoring medals at major international meets, oversaw the coaching of Semenya and her teammates.
Arbeit was a former Stasi spy and head coach of the East German athletics team during its heyday of systematic doping of athletes. He was disgraced in 1995 when he was named in a German parliamentary inquiry as a key figure in the 1970s and 1980s East German doping machine. Professor Werner Franke, who headed the inquest, called Arbeit a mastermind of one of "the largest pharmacological programs in history," and, "a major person responsible for the use of anabolic steroids."
A member of the South African team wrote in an email to the Daily Telegraph that Arbeit was fully in control of Semenya's training and preparation for Berlin.
"It was very strange; Caster's coach was the only personal coach of possible medalists who was not present at the training camps in Germany or at the actual world championships," the source wrote. "ASA covered the costs of all the other relevant personal coaches of Khotso (long jump medalist Godfrey Mokoena), (men's 800m winner Mbulaeni) Mulaudzi, and (hurdler) LJ van Zyl even had the costs of his own physiotherapist paid for by ASA. Ekkart and team management knew there would be trouble about Semenya and numerous times our coaches and officials were told not to discuss anything about Caster with anyone.''
ASA president Leonard Chuene vehemently denied the claims in an interview with the South African website Independent Online.
"Arbeit does not work with these girls," Chuene said. "First of all, (they say) it was chromosomes (that helped her win the 800m final); now it's an injection. People must look for reasons not to say this girl is a champion. Arbeit has absolutely nothing to do with this girl. There was no way Arbeit was going to be injecting her."
Chuene has refused to accept any blame for the controversy that has arisen, and has instead accused racist South Africans for creating this fiasco.
"This is about racism," Chuene told the Independent Online. "These rumors come from South Africa. Why did these people write to the IAAF? These are the same people who don't want the 2010 World Cup, the same people who bring black people down and the same people who refuse to believe that Africans can make it on the world stage."
Afriforum, a civil rights organization, has now charged Chuene with inciting racial polarization, stating that his statements, "transformed the deplorable events regarding Caster Semenya's gender into a racial issue," and violate IAAF rules.
Meanwhile, there is still doubt as to Semenya's gender even within her own country.
According to the Independent Online, some well-wishers at Semenya's homecoming parade chanted, "Look at her! She is so beautiful! This is a real celebrity!" Others shouted, "This is a girl!"
Semenya didn't help her cause by telling the crowd, "Eita! Hola! Don't be surprised at my way of greeting because I love hanging out with majimbos (gents)."
While one woman gasped at the masculine undertone in those words, another woman made this muted observation: "But how will she have children with that small breast? She will have all the money but she may never have children."
Semenya's immediate athletic future remains unclear.
The final major competition of the season, the World Athletics Final in Thessaloniki, Greece, begins on Sept. 13. While Semenya owns the fastest time in the world and the gold medal from the World Championships (watch video), she has not competed on the summer circuit and thus has not accrued enough points to gain automatic qualification for the meet.
Her only avenue to compete at the WAF would be through a wild-card entry, and since those invitations are gifted by the IAAF, it is unlikely she will receive one while the governing body and the ASA remain embroiled in their bitter political battle.
Hennie Kriel, Semenya's coach at the University of Pretoria Athletics Club, told France24 television that he believes Semenya has the talent to break the 800m world record of 1:53.28 set in 1983 by Jarmila Kratochvilova of Czechoslovakia, but wonders if this controversy will keep her from ever reaching that potential.
"No one knows what the next step is going to be," he said. "First of all, hopefully everything around her will settle down and she can concentrate on what she needs to do, and that's training because that is what makes you a champion. "
What does it mean?
My morning ritual last Saturday was no different than that of many sports fans around the country. It involved pouring a cup of coffee, grabbing the newspaper off the front porch and flipping on ESPN to watch SportsCenter.
I happened to turn on at 8:30, halfway through the hour-long program but before Top 10 Plays so there was still chance to catch up on what I had missed.
Needless to say, I was stoked when Top Play No. 9 was Yelena Isinbayeva's world record clearance in the pole vault in Zurich the night before (watch video). But the commentary from Neil Everett that accompanied the clip had a sobering effect, and nearly made me choke on my Ethiopian java blend.
Here is Everett's call: "At number nine we go to the track and field meet in Switzerland... Yelena Isinbayava, Isinbayeva broke her own world pole vault record with a five point zero six meters, which I don't know what that means. Moving on, at number eight..."
After a few minutes, when my blood cooled from boil to simmer, I was struck by how the handling of this 10 second highlight encapsulated a number of the image problems track and field is facing.
First, ESPN needs to do a better job all around in this situation. How about having some producer or teleprompter writer converting out the 5.06m to 16 feet, 7¾ inches so the talking heads "know what that means?"
Speaking of which: Neil, you've got to do a better job dude. You graduated from Oregon for crying out loud. A little pole vaulting never rubbed off after four years in Eugene?
Broader scope, and maybe more disturbing, is how this incident is indicative of how far track and field has fallen off the ball-sport-dominated American sporting radar. You need no further evidence of how small the sport's Q-rating in America is outside of the Olympic year.
Two weeks after a remarkable World Championships, that Q-rating is hovering around zero with an audience more in tune with baseball pennant races and preseason football. The only Athletics remotely identifiable in this country play in Oakland, and at 16 games below .500 and almost 21 games out of first place in the American League West, they aren't too popular either.
Perhaps track and field would be slightly more popular if the sport had better athlete recognition. As an example, Isinbayeva is unquestionably one of the world's five biggest stars within track and field circles. Outside of that circle? Not so much.
Would Everett have butchered the pronunciation of Isinbayeva's name had she been a more mainstream athlete, say a tennis player? Doubtful.
Of the thousands of elite track and field athletes worldwide, the only one that has any crossover appeal right now is Usain Bolt. No one has had trouble pronouncing his name on SportsCenter.
If only Bolt could pole vault.
Improving the visibility of track and field athletes, particularly on television, within the United States is high on the agenda of USA Track & Field CEO Doug Logan. It cannot be overstated how critical this endeavor is to the survival of the sport moving forward. It's going to require a culture change within and outside of the sport's inner circles, which obviously won't happen overnight.
In an interview with my colleague, Alan Abrahamson, in Berlin (read more), Logan called the process "a journey," and added, "I can't tell you when or if we will ever reach the destination."
Chances are, we'll know by watching SportsCenter.
On road to greatness
After finishing 11th in the London Marathon in April (watch video), Dathan Ritzenhein was so disenchanted with the direction his career was going, he made the difficult decision to leave his coach, Brad Hudson, after five years and began training on his own.
Shortly thereafter, he began working with Alberto Salazar and the Nike Oregon Project in Portland, and suddenly found himself on a new trajectory.
"(London) was a big blow for me, and so that's when I had to make a hard decision, and it's always difficult to break out of your comfort zone," Ritzenhein said during a conference call with reporters on Tuesday. "When I went to work with Alberto it really breathed a new fresh life into me. Alberto has been able to get me excited about racing again, excited about running, and he got me believing that I can run with the best guys in the world, and that's something that I kind of lacked over the last few years."
Ritzenhein (stats) is no longer a runner lacking confidence.
After setting a personal-best of 27:22.28 in a sixth-place finish in the 10,000m at the World Championships - the best time and highest finish ever by an American at Worlds - the 26-year-old broke the American record at 5000m with his third-place finish in 12:56.27 at the Weltklasse Zurich meeting (watch video).
The performance bettered the mark of 12:58.21 set by Bob Kennedy at the same meet in 1996, and made Ritzenhein just the third American ever to break the 13-minute barrier. Kennedy and Bernard Lagat are the others.
"When I first started getting interested in distance running and started really getting good at it, I was at that age when Bob was in his real prime when he ran that time, and that was an inspiring moment for me," Ritzenhein said. "I remember watching the Atlanta Olympics and he was an idol of mine for so many years and he still is. That was a pinnacle moment for my interest in running, when Bob ran that record.
"The record has lasted for 13 years and it's a testament to how difficult that record is, and there's been some great runners to go through and have not approached that yet. For me to be the person to finally make the big jump and actually get it, I'm so thrilled to be able to have that. In the future, should I hopefully continue to improve and have great races, and maybe run faster than that, this will be one that will always stick in my mind because it's a turning point, I think."
During the early going of the race, Ritzenhein ran near the back of the pack and was nowhere near challenging Ethiopia's Kenenisa Bekele near the front. Although he said he "held on for dear life," Ritzenhein never lost contact with the runners ahead of him, and was gradually able to reel them in. With a mile to go, he said he felt strong enough to make a run at Kennedy's record and went for it.
"Alberto told me beforehand, he said, 'You can't go out in 4:02 or 4:03 the first mile, but you can't get dropped either, because if you get dropped, you can't run fast," Ritzenhein said. "So I just had to hold on to the back, and it was so fast that I had to really stay focused and bring it back slowly and try to run a fairly even pace. That was really difficult for me at first because it was so fast that I felt awkward through the first half of the race, but through the middle part of the race I started to catch people and feel good.
"With about four laps to go I realized that I had a very good shot at breaking Bob's record because I felt great at that time and I had been running an even pace and hadn't fallen off at all. I knew I was going to break it with 200 meters to go because I saw the clock and knew that I would have to really, really fade (to not break the record). I think I was at 12:25, and I knew that I would have to run 33 seconds the last 200, and I was still feeling good enough at that point that I knew I could hold it."
Bekele won the race in 12:52.32, followed by Edwin Soi (stats) of Kenya in 12:55.03 and then Ritzenehin. He said the fact that he finished third in the race did not diminish his assessment of the accomplishment.
"I was really just thinking about competing as much as possible, and when I got into the later stages in the race especially, I saw Bekele close enough to me," Ritzenhein said. "The greatest runner in history was not that far ahead and I was closing on him, so I know I ran as good as I could and ran an awesome race. Of course I didn't win the race, but that doesn't happen that often with as strong and deep as distance running is, so it would be really greedy for me to say that I was disappointed at all because I didn't win the race. I think I ran an amazing race, and even if I didn't break Bob's record I still was able to get in there and compete and that's really the step in the direction we're trying to take."
Ritzenhein said that the biggest thing he's gained this summer has been a renewal of his passion for racing. Given that, and his recent success at both 5000m and 10,000m, one might think he has shifted focus from road running to the track. But the Olympic marathoner said his future is in the 26.2-mile event. Although he will not run a fall marathon, Ritzenhein said he will start building up his mileage.
"Next up for me is the World Half-Marathon Championships," Ritzenhein said of the Oct. 11 competition in Birmingham, England. "The thought behind that is coming off from this season we still feel that I'm the best fitted over the longer distances. Ultimately that means the marathon and that's really what I love to do, although I've got to say that I really have enjoyed track this summer.
"Alberto wanted to avoid, though, getting into the actual full on, big training of the marathon because we really wanted to take this next year, year and a half, to get efficient again and get fast and work on my form and technique. To do that we needed not to do a fall marathon, which was a hard decision."
Ritzenhein added the choice to do the World Half had as much to do with his future as it does with his current status as one of the premier distance runners on the planet.
"After the 10K, Alberto said, "You're one of the best runners in the world and you need to race the best runners in the world,'" Ritzenhein said. "The World Half-Marathon Championship field is going to be so deep and so strong that it's going to be something where we can really mix it up, and that will give me the confidence the next time I step on the line in the marathon."
Serious approach, serious results
By her own admission, hubris got the better of Yelena Isinbayeva at the World Championships. She went to Berlin with a winning mark in mind, and since that mark was well below her personal-best, she figured she had victory in the bag.
She wound up leaving the German capital having cleared no bars (watch video) in what was perhaps the most embarrassing moment of her storied career (read more).
"I was a little overconfident," Isinbayeva said at a press conference last week. "I just thought that I would just take one more gold medal, and then I would easily do another world record. When I went to the track, I didn't feel like I was at a competition. My body was there, but my mind was absent. I was thinking about other things. Because I thought that that competition was going to be so easy for me. I knew that 4.80, 4.85 maximum would be enough for the victory. And of course, I would then try another world record. So I was so confident with myself that I lost a little bit of my concentration."
Indeed Isinbayeva was more business-like in her approach at the Weltklasse Zurich meeting on Friday. She seemed incredibly focused on solidifying her victory, and keeping alive her hopes of a share of the $1 million Golden League jackpot (see contenders). She took two sound jumps to seal the deal, and had plenty of energy left to clear 5.06m/16-7¾ for the new world record she coveted.
"Now I'm focusing first on the victory then on the world record. I don't want to say anything before the competition anymore. I'd rather just say it on the field. Before, I was promising too much. Now I prefer to keep quiet, not to say anything, and keep everything inside. So, I'll just focus on the victory first, then a personal best."
But she hasn't totally gotten over Berlin.
And in the long run, that may be a good thing, perhaps the best thing for her.
"In one way it's good because I have to feel these feelings just to improve myself," Isinbayeva said of her Berlin failure. "Just to value all my competitions and to value all the victories and world records, because before Berlin, all my victories were just nothing special. I was there, it was not a surprise. It was like almost nothing. So I don't want to forget these feelings."
What makes him great?
After shattering his own world records in the 100m (watch video) and 200m (watch video) -- and seemingly the boundaries of what the human body can achieve - by running 9.58 and 19.19 at the World Championships in Berlin, Usain Bolt was repeatedly described by media and fellow athletes as being "a freak of nature."
But since Bolt was actually born and not built in some Kingston laboratory like a modern-day Caribbean Frankenstein, quantifying what constitutes "freak of nature" can be difficult.
On the heels of two biomechanical studies of Bolt's races in Berlin (read more and more), The Los Angeles Times has attempted to do just that. Its report has produced several theories as to what is actually behind Bolt's extraordinary speed.
We know that at 6-foot-5, Bolt is significantly taller than the prototypical sprinter. With just a rudimentary understanding of physics, we also grasp that it takes more energy to move a larger object than a smaller one.
So how does Bolt, with a longer stride length, manage to not lose energy at the same rate as say Tyson Gay, who's stride length is much shorter due to his 5-foot 11-inch frame?
Corey Hart, an exercise physiologist in Boise, Idaho, suggested it may have something to do with the way Bolt's foot flexes toward the shin, known as dorsiflexion. He said not putting his heel close to the ground during turnover may enable him to maintain energy longer.
"Sprinters run on their forefeet," he says. "When you think about sprinting, you resist the force that goes into the ground by not putting the heel down."
Dan Cipriani, a professor of exercise science at San Diego State, thinks the opposite may be true, and the key may lie in the way Bolt moves his foot away from the shin during push-off, or plantar flexion.
"The way he's able to propel himself forward, I would assume he has very good plantar flexion strength and speed," he said.
If either, or both, theories hold truth, then it is likely Bolt is genetically predisposed to possessing both running traits.
Perhaps Bolt has the ACTN3 gene, also known as the speed gene. According to the Times report, studies have shown that many power athletes have this gene, which allows the body to produce a specific muscle protein that aids in activities such as sprinting.
While Martin Munzer, president and chief executive of CyGene Laboratories Inc. in Florida, said there is no doubt that a convergence of genetic gifts have contributed to his success, there are a lot of outside factors - dynamics that science has no answer for - that have shaped the sprinter into a marvel.
"Just because you have a certain genetic profile it doesn't predestine you to anything," Munzer said.
Gotta go
Given the number of injuries he sustained earlier this season, it is understandable to want to ignore the past big-stage failures and give Asafa Powell the benefit of the doubt when he says he can beat reigning 100m/200m world-record holder Usain Bolt.
According to Powell, a four-time world-record holder himself prior to Bolt's meteoric rise, the proof was in his terrific start and 9.88-second run in Zurich, which did give Bolt a run for his money (watch video).
Bolt ran 9.81 to win.
Now I know that I can beat Usain when everything works fine for me," Powell said in an interview with TrackAlerts.com. "I have 9.6 in my legs and at my next meet I'm going to put it on the track. Everyone has to go out with that in mind, that they can beat Usain. He's way ahead of the crowd right now but we're really playing catch-up. We'll get there somehow."
But 9.6 isn't going to cut it.
Tyson Gay knows this.
That's why he has set his goal-time even lower for next season, when he will be recovering from impending groin surgery.
"I really believe 9.5 seconds is possible," Gay told Sportsbeat before running at the Aviva British Grand Prix in Gateshead on Monday. "I know it sounds strange for a guy who's best is 9.7 to say that but I honestly believe it. Usain knows I'm going to be around next season and it's great for the sport to have that rivalry. I didn't realize how special it was to run against someone that talented - he's keeping me in the limelight as well.
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