The controversy over the 800-meter world champion, Caster Semenya, has flooded the media for weeks now. Her gold medal remains hers and apologies have been made, but the damage is done. Her family has spoken out and the words remain sound and honest. Her father speaks about his “little girl:”
”I raised her and I have never doubted her gender. She is a woman and I can repeat that a million times. 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.”
Caster’s father wasn’t the only voice of defense, her grandmother spoke out too:
”[The controversy] doesn’t bother me that much because I know she’s a woman – I raised her myself,” she said in her rural village in northern Limpopo province. 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.”
Her country is behind her and rallying for her continued involvement in the sport. It will be up to Caster if she competes again.