Visiting IAAF president faces hostile reception

The women’s groups are against the IAAF’s decision to introduce gender testing for athletes with different sexual development. The affected races are from 400m to a mile, with the regulation seen as targeting athletes like South Africa’s Caster Semenya, who was forced to undergo an embarrassing sex verification test in 2009, to ascertain whether she was female or not.

A petition was signed during the International Working Group (IWG) World Conference on Women and Sport in Gaborone last year, where women’s group strongly condemned IAAF’s proposed regulation. The petition was submitted to the IAAF by Women Sports Africa Network.