Is the favorite in the women's 800m actually a man?

THE family of South Africa's new 800-metre world champion Caster Semenya have shrugged off questions about the runner's gender.

All major newspapers' front pages pictured a triumphant Semenya who powered to a 1minute 55.45seconds win - the world's best this year - shortly after the athletics governing body announced that the runner's gender was to be verified.

"She is my little girl. I raised her and I have never doubted her gender. She is a woman and I can repeat that a million times," father Jacob Semenya told the popular tabloid Sowetan, which dubbed the champion "Our Golden Girl".

"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."

Semenya's 80-year-old grandmother Maphuthi Sekgala told The Times that the first year sports science student had long been teased about her boyish looks and for being the only girl in her local soccer team.

"(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.".....

"stepped-on" said
Wow she is quite manly.

"Brenda" said
Especially when you see the rest of her... No hourglass shape at all...

"Brenda" said
Oh, Prax, screw you for your sig