Caster Semenya deserves better.
She deserves better than to be targeted by her own sport and ridiculed by the women she routinely runs faster than.
The 29-year-old South African is a three-time World Champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist in the 800 meters, one of the most grueling events in athletics. Participants must have the strength of longer distance runners but also the speed of a short sprinter — how else could one cover a half-mile in well under two minutes?
But Semenya is tall, Black, openly gay, not conventionally feminine-looking and she’s damn good, which has put her at the mercy of the ruling body of her sport.