World Athletics Championships This article is more than 14 years old

Caster Semenya sex row: 'She's my little girl,' says father

This article is more than 14 years oldSouth Africa rallies to defence of its new world champion who has been told by athletics officials to prove she is female

The father of a women's world champion athlete today angrily denied accusations that the teenager was secretly born a man, insisting: "She is my little girl."

Caster Semenya, 18, is undergoing a gender test to prove she is female after beating her rivals by a huge margin to win the gold medal in the world championship 800 metres in Berlin.

Family, friends and teachers at her home in South Africa recalled how Semenya played football with boys, wore trousers instead of skirts and endured teasing by her peers. But all asserted that she is definitely a woman.

Jacob Semenya, her father, told the Sowetan newspaper: "She is my little girl. I raised her and I have never doubted her gender. She is a woman and I can repeat that a million times."

He attacked his daughter's critics, saying: "For the first time South Africans have someone to be proud of and detractors are already shouting wolf. It is unfair. I wish they would leave my daughter alone."

Semenya, who has a muscular build and deep voice, aroused suspicions recently with a dramatic improvement in performance. She went from a virtual unknown to the world's fastest woman over 800m this year when she clocked 1:56.72 at the African junior championships in Mauritius. She sliced more than a second off that with her winning time of 1:55.45 in Berlin on Wednesday.

Athletics' world governing body has asked South African officials to conduct a "gender verification test". The test, which takes weeks to complete, requires a physical medical evaluation, and includes reports from a gynaecologist, endocrinologist, psychologist, an internal medicine specialist and an expert on gender.

There is bewilderment and indignation over the controversy in Fairlie, the impoverished village in Limpopo province where Semenya practised her running on dirt roads and poorly kept playing fields. She lived with her grandmother while at secondary school and grew up without electricity or running water.

Her grandmother, Maphuthi Sekgala, said: "I know she's a woman – I raised her myself. She called me after [the heats] and told me that they think she's a man. What can I do when they call her a man, when she's really not a man? It is God who made her look that way."

The 80-year-old added that Semenya had been teased when growing up because of her boyish looks. "If the teasing hurt her, she kept the hurt to herself and didn't show what she was feeling," she told South Africa's Times newspaper.

The athlete's mother said doubts about her daughter's gender were motivated by jealousy. Dorcus Semenya told the Star: "If you go to my home village and ask any of my neighbours, they would tell you that Mokgadi [Caster] is a girl. They know because they helped raise her. People can say whatever they like but the truth will remain, which is that my child is a girl. I am not concerned about such things."

A picture emerged of Semenya as a tomboy who transgressed the rigid gender roles of South Africa's traditional rural communities. Her mother said Caster's first love was football.

"Often I would ask her why she kept playing soccer, and with boys. All she said was, 'It's because I like it.' With her, everything was about soccer, soccer." Semenya was the only girl in the football team in Fairlie. Her former teachers spoke with pride about her prowess but admitted they had not always been certain of her gender. Eric Modiba, head of the Nthema secondary school, where Semenya was a pupil from 2004 until last year, said: "I have never seen her in a skirt or dress, always trousers. Initially we doubted her gender but eventually we realised she's a girl.

"We've seen her birth certificate and her file from primary school. At about the age of 16 she started to associate with other girls and try different hairstyles. But she never developed breasts."

Morris Gilbert, a spokesman for Pretoria University's sports department, where Semenya is now a sports science student, said the issue of her gender had not been raised. "We are all very proud of her and of what she's achieved," he said. "The university stands behind her all the way."

Her coach, Michael Seme, laughed off the allegations, saying that Semenya fielded constant questions about whether she was a boy from younger athletes when training. "Then she has to explain that she can't help the fact that her voice is so gruff and that she really is a girl. The remarkable thing is that Caster remains completely calm and never loses her dignity when she is questioned about her gender."

Semenya had been "crudely humiliated" a few times and the closest Seme said he had seen her to anger was earlier this year when some people wanted her barred from using a women's toilet. "Then Caster said, 'Do you want me to pull down my pants that you can see?' Those same people came to her later and said they were extremely sorry."

Semenya also received the backing of the governing African National Congress, which called on South Africans to rally around "our golden girl". The ANC said: "We condemn the motives of those who have made it their business to question her gender due to her physique and running style. Such comments can only serve to portray women as being weak."

The ANC's youth league condemned the "racist agenda" of "imperialist countries", while the Young Communist League argued: "This smacks of racism of the highest order. It represents a mentality of conforming feminine outlook within the white race."

Semenya herself is said to be bemused by the speculation. Phiwe Mlangeni-Tsholetsane, the South African team manager in Berlin, said: "She said to me she doesn't see what the big deal is all about. She believes it is a God-given talent and she will exercise it."

Victor victorious: other athletes' stories

Tennis player Renée Richards made her women's singles debut at the US Open in 1977, 17 years after she had played her last match there in the men's singles. Richards, born Richard Raskind, had undergone a sex change in 1975, and was allowed to compete as a woman following a ruling by the New York State superior court.

The Brazilian judoka Edinanci Silva was born a hermaphrodite but had surgery to remove her male genitalia in 1996 and has since competed in three Olympics as a woman.

Dora Ratjen, who represented Germany in the women's high jump at the 1936 Olympics, was revealed nearly 20 years later to be a man named Hermann. Ratjen, who did not win a medal, admitted in 1955 that he had lived the life of a girl for three years – binding up his genitals when competing – saying he had been pressured into doing so by the Nazi youth movement.

The Polish sprinter Ewa Klobukowska was the first Olympic athlete to be disqualified after a chromatin test, in 1967. She was stripped of her two Olympic medals and banned from all professional sports, yet later went on to get pregnant and bear a son.

Stanislawa Walasiewicz, who won 100m gold for Poland at the 1932 Olympics and set 11 world records during her career, was revealed to have male genitalia only after she died in 1980. Walasiewicz, who changed her name to Stella Walsh and moved to the US, was caught in crossfire at an Ohio bank robbery and her secret was revealed during an autopsy.

Paolo Bandini

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