Caster looking good

South African 800m queen Caster Semenya is ready to burn up the track in Europe after recovering from the knee injury sustained on her return after winning a silver medal at the 2012 London Olympics.

Semenya's multiple world and Olympic champion coach Maria Mutola is impressed with her fitness.

"Caster has been hard at training. We are together on a daily basis at the High Performance Centre and I'm quite happy as a coach with her progress," said Mutola.

"I know people have been saying all sorts of things about Caster and her fitness, but I can tell you she is going to silence them. As a professional, whatever I do, I want the end product to be the best, not second, third, or fourth.

"The rehabilitation went very well and we are happy with the training process. Caster will be back in action in Europe in two weeks' time. Agent Jukka Harkonen is working on something. I think we will be able to name the event she will compete in next week.

"We want to use that event for her to qualify for the World Championships," said Mutola, adding that Semenya will not struggle financially to go to Europe after she was kicked out of the Sascoc Operation Excellence Programme.

Semenya was not retained on the Opex after Sascoc argued that she had not trained "for some time".

"That is not an issue for us, the main issue is to get Caster to compete in Europe and qualify for the World Championships where the plan is to win gold," she said.

Semenya is equally upbeat about her chances of going to Russia.

"It's been a long time since I participated in a competitive event, in fact the last time was when I won a silver medal at the Olympics in London," she said.

"Coach Maria has developed a special training programme which helped me a great deal. Everything is fine now and I'm focusing on qualifying for the World Championships. The bigger picture for me is to reclaim the title I won in Germany in 2009."

Sascoc suspended Athletics South Africa's membership after the federation defied them by reinstating suspended board members, including president James Evans. As part of the ASA suspension, Sascoc also kicked out all the athletes from Opex, like Khotso Mokoena, Sunette Viljoen, LJ van Zyl and Stephen Mokoka.

ASA president James Evans said the board will make a plan to assist the athletes in terms of paying for their training camps, travelling, accommodation and medical expenses.