• August 2009
Aged 18, Semenya wins world 800m gold in Berlin in 1min 55.45sec. Afterwards the IAAF reveals the athlete has been the subject of a gender verification process and she is declared ineligible to compete for 11 months.
• July 2010
The IAAF announces Semenya is cleared to compete again. “The process initiated in 2009 in the case of Caster Semenya has now been completed,” the IAAF says. “The process” is later revealed to be hormone treatment.
• April 2011
The IAAF announces it is adopting new rules governing the eligibility of females with hyperandrogenism, such as Semenya. The decision means there is an upper limit for women’s testosterone levels – set at 10nmol/L, with anyone above that required to take hormones to lower their level.
• August 2012
The ruling is expected to hamper Semenya but she goes on to win 800m silver at the London Olympics, having done the same at the 2011 worlds in Daegu. Both medals are bumped up to gold after the Russian winner, Mariya Savinova, is found guilty of doping.
• October 2014
The teenage Indian sprinter Dutee Chand appeals to the Court of Arbitration for Sport over her indefinite ban for elevated testosterone levels.
• July 2015
Chand is cleared to compete after Cas suspends the IAAF’s hyperandrogenism rules for two years. In its ruling Cas urges the IAAF to create a procedure where athletes should not be excluded as a “consequence of the natural and unaltered state of their body”.
• August 2016
Semenya wins 800m gold at the Rio Olympics in a time of 1min 55.28sec. But the triumph is overshadowed when the IAAF president, Sebastian Coe, says it will challenge Cas’s ruling.
• April 2018
The IAAF announces new rules which would force female athletes to reduce and maintain their testosterone levels to no greater than 5nmol/L by 1 November if they want to compete in events ranging from 400m to a mile.
• May 2019
Semenya loses her landmark legal case against athletics’ governing body, the IAAF, which means she will have to take medication to reduce her testosterone if she wants to keep running 400m to a mile on the international stage.
