Sunday Times Literary Awards shortlist | An extract from ‘The Race to Be Myself’ by Caster Semenya

Criteria: The winner should demonstrate the illumination of truthfulness, especially those forms of it that are new, delicate, unfashionable and fly in the face of power; compassion; elegance of writing; and intellectual and moral integrity.

The Race To Be Myself by Caster Semenya (Jonathan Ball Publishers)
Caster Semenya is one of the greatest athletes ever to run the 800 metres. The Race to be Myself tells the story of Caster’s dramatic life as a gifted and self-trained novice who became a world champion – and takes readers behind the scenes of her inspiring battle to run in the “body that God gave me”.
Judges said: A cautionary tale for bigots the world over, as relevant now as it was when Semenya was running against prejudice across the world. Vulnerable, heart-rending and unflinchingly brave, this is a story that needs to be told again and again, until the hatred abates.

Read an abridged extract from the prologue of The Race to Be Myself:

I am Mokgadi Caster Semenya. I am one of the greatest track and field athletes to ever run the 800m distance. I’ve won two Olympic gold medals and three world championships, along with dozens of Diamond League meets, and went unbeaten for almost four years. Unfortunately, it is not what I have achieved on the track that has likely brought me to your attention.

Much has been written about me in virtually every major international outlet in the world since I came into the public’s eye in 2009, and most of it is outright lies or half-truths. I have waited a long time to tell my story. For more than a decade I have preferred to let my running do the talking. After what has happened to me, it felt easier that way.

In 2019, the International Association of Athletics Federation (now World Athletics) banned me from running my favored 800m event, along with the 400m and the 1500m distances. My last IAAF-sanctioned 800m race was on June 30, 2019, when I won the Diamond League Prefontaine Classic at Stanford University. I was not banned because I was caught doping or cheating. Rather, I am no longer allowed to run those distances because of a biological condition I was born with and that I refuse to take unnecessary drugs to change.

I have what is called a difference in sex development (DSD), an umbrella term that refers to the varying genetic conditions where an embryo responds in a different way to the hormones that spark the development of internal and external sexual organs. To put it simply, on the outside I am female, I have a vagina, but I do not have a uterus. I do not menstruate and my body produces an elevated amount of testosterone, which gives me more typically masculine characteristics than other women, such as a deeper voice and fewer curves. I cannot carry a child because I don’t have a womb but, contrary to what many people think, I do not produce sperm. I can’t biologically contribute to making new life. I did not know any of this about my body until soon after August 2009, when I won the gold medal in the 800m race at the World Championships in Berlin, Germany. I was only eighteen years old and had been subjected to invasive and humiliating gender confirmation tests without my consent just prior to the race. What followed was a media firestorm that continues to this day.

People believed all sorts of insanity about me—that I was a boy who managed to hide his penis all the way to the world championships, that I was paid to have my penis removed so South Africa could bring home a medal in the women’s category, that I was a hermaphrodite forced to run as a girl for political gain. Journalists descended into my village and every school I’d ever attended. My parents and siblings, friends, and teachers, were harassed with calls and by visitors, day and night. I can still hear my mother wailing desperately as she tried to explain to perfect strangers that I was born a girl, and that I was her little girl, and why was all of this happening?

I have never spoken in detail about what happened during this time of my life but I am now ready to do so. It is said that silence will not protect us. From the moment I stepped on to the track for the final meet in Berlin on August 19, 2009, I have been vilified and persecuted. My accomplishments since have been celebrated, yes, but it is hard to think of another athlete at the elite level who has endured as much scrutiny and psychological abuse from sports governing bodies, other competitors, and the media as I have. It has affected me in ways I cannot describe, although I will try.

And while I have faced significant hardships throughout my life, I want to make clear that my story is not one of pain and torment, but rather about hope, self-confidence, and resilience.

I am still standing; I am still here.